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.  OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 


Strange  Stories  from  History 

for 

Young   People 

BY    GEORGE    GARY    EGGLESTON 


AUTHOR    OF 


"RED  EAGLE"  "THE  WRECK  OF  THE  RED  BIRD" 
"THE  BIG  BROTHER"  "THE  SIGNAL  BOYS" 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK  AND   LONDON 

HARPER    &     BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 
1903 


Copyright,  1885,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


PREFACE. 


IN  calling  the  tales  in  this  volume  "  Strange  Sto- 
ries "  I  have  sought  simply  to  indicate  that,  in  the 
main,  they  are  unfamiliar  to  youthful  readers,  and 
that  most  of  them  relate  deeds  and  occurrences  some 
what  out  of  the  common.  In  choosing  the  themes  I 
have  tried  to  avoid  the  tales  that  have  been  often 
used,  and  to  tell  only  those  of  which  young  readers 
generally  have  not  before  heard. 

Of  course,  a  book  of  this  kind  can  make  no  preten- 
sion to  originality  of  matter,  as  the  facts  used  in  it 
are  to  be  found  in  historical  works  of  recognized  au- 
thority, though  many  of  them  have  been  drawn  from 
books  that  are  not  easily  accessible  to  the  majority 
of  readers.  If  there  is  any  originality  in  my  little 


2129402 


vi  Preface. 

volume  it  is  in  the  manner  in  which  the  tales  are 
told.  I  have  endeavored  to  tell  them  as  simply  as 
possible,  and  at  the  same  time  with  as  much  dramat- 
ic force  and  fervor  as  I  could  command,  while  adher- 
ing rigidly  to  the  facts  of  history. 

It  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  say  to  what 
sources  I  am  indebted  for  materials.  The  incidents 
related  have  been  familiar  to  me  for  years,  as  they 
are  to  all  persons  whose  reading  of  history  has  been 
at  all  extensive,  and  I  cannot  say  with  any  certainty 
how  much  of  each  I  learned  from  one  and  how  much 
from  another  historical  writer.  Nor  is  it  in  any  way 
necessary  that  I  should  do  so,  as  the  recorded  facts 
of  history  are  common  property.  But  a  special  ac- 
knowledgment is  due  to  Mr.  James  Parton  in  the 
case  of  the  tale  of  the  Negro  Fort,  and  also  for  cer- 
tain details  in  those  relating  to  the  New  Orleans 
campaign  of  1814-15.  In  that  field  Mr.  Partou  is  an 
original  investigator,  to  whose  labors  every  writer  on 
the  subject  must  be  indebted.  I  wish  also  to  ac- 


Preface.  vii 

knowledge  my  obligation  to  Mr.  A.  B.  Meek,  the  au- 
thor of  a  little  work  entitled  "Romantic  Passages  in 
Southwestern  History,"  for  the  main  facts  in  the  sto- 
ries of  the  Charge  of  the  Hounds  and  the  Battle  of 
the  Canoes  on  the  Alabama  River ;  but,  with  respect 
to  those  matters,  I  have  had  the  advantage  of  private 
sources  of  information  also. 

Most  of  the  stories  in  the  volume  were  originally 
written  for  Harpers  Young  People;  one  was  first 
published  in  Good  Cheer,  and  a  few  in  other  periodi- 
cals. I  owe  thanks  to  the  editors  and  publishers 
concerned  for  permission  to  reprint  them  in  this 
form. 


CONTENTS. 


HISTORY  STORIES. 

PAG* 

TBB  STORY  OF  THE  NEGRO  FORT 13 

A  WAR  FOR  AN  ARCHBISHOP 26 

THE  BOY  COMMANDER  OF  THE  CAMISARDS 38 

THE  CANOE  FIGHT 55 

THE  BATTLE  OF  LAKE  BORGNB 67 

THE  BATTLE  IN  THE  DARK 77 

THE  TROUBLESOME  BURGHERS 88 

THE  DEFENCE  OF  ROCHELLE 99 

THE  SAD  STORY  OF  A  BOY  KING Ill 

Two  OBSCURE  HEROES 120 

THE  CHARGE  OF  THE  HOUNDS .  130 


x  Contents. 

PAGI 

THE  STORY  OF  A  WINTER  CAMPAIGN 140 

YOUNG  WASHINGTON  IN  THE  WOODS 151 

THE  STORY  OF  CATHERINE 163 

THE  VIRGINIA  WIFE-MARKET  .  .175 


BIOGRAPHY  STORIES. 

BOYHOOD  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER 185 

THE  SCULLION  WHO  BECAME  A  SCULPTOR 193 

BOYHOOD  OF  WILLIAM  CHAMBERS 200 

How  A  BOY  HIRED  OUT,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT.     .     .     .  206 

THE  WICKEDEST  MAN  IN  THE  WORLD 212 

A  PRINCE  WHO  WOULD  NOT  STAY  DEAD.  .  228 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


MM 

Boarding  the  Gun-boats   ....          Frontispiece 

Breakfast  and  Battle 23 

Vladimir  Besieging  the  City  Containing  his  Archbishop.  .  .  35 
Cavalier  Personating  the  Lieutenant  of  the  Count  Broglio  .  .  47 
With  a  Single  Blow  he  Knocked  over  the  Indian  with  whom 

Austill  was  Struggling 63 

General  Jackson  at  New  Orleans 79 

The  Burghers  Prepare  to  Defend  their  City 95 

Richelieu  Surveying  the  Works  at  Rochelle 103 

The  Parting  between  King  Richard  II.  and  Queen  Isabella  .117 
Martin  Preaching  to  the  People  on  the  Duty  of  Fighting  .  .125 
"Just  at  the  Moment  when  Matters  were  at  their  Worst,  he 

Rode  up 137 

Capture  of  the  Dutch  Fleet  by  the  Soldiers  of  the  French  Re- 
public      149 

Washington  as  a  Surveyor 157 

"  She  Went  Boldly  into  his  Tent" 171 

" '  To  the  End  of  the  Twelfth  Book  of  the  jEneid?  answered 
the  ' Idle"1  Boy  in  Triumph" 189 


STRANGE  STORIES  FROM  HISTORY, 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  NEGRO  FORT. 

DURING  the  war  of  1812-14,  between  Great  Brit- 
ain and  the  United  States,  the  weak  Spanish  Gover- 
nor of  Florida — for  Florida  was  then  Spanish  terri- 
tory— permitted  the  British  to  make  Pensacola  their 
base  of  operations  against  us.  This  was  a  gross  out- 
rage, as  we  were  at  peace  with  Spain  at  the  time,  and 
General  Jackson,  acting  on  his  own  responsibility, 
invaded  Florida  in  retaliation. 

Among  the  British  at  that  time  was  an  eccentric 
Irish  officer,  Colonel  Edward  Nichols,  who  enlisted 
and  tried  to  make  soldiers  of  a  large  number  of  the 
Seminole  Indians.  In  1815,  after  the  war  was  over, 
Colonel  Nichols  again  visited  the  Serninoles,  who 


14  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

were  disposed  to  be  hostile  to  the  United  States,  as 
Colonel  Nichols  himself  was,  and  made  an  astonish- 
ing treaty  with  them,  in  which  an  alliance,  offensive 
and  defensive,  between  Great  Britain  and  the  Semi- 
noles,  was  agreed  upon.  We  had  made  peace  with 
Great  Britain  a  few  months  before,  and  yet  this  ri- 
diculous Irish  colonel  signed  a  treaty  binding  Great 
Britain  to  fight  us  whenever  the  Seminoles  in  the 
Spanish  territory  of  Florida  should  see  fit  to  make 
a  war !  If  this  extraordinary  performance  had  been 
all,  it  would  not  have  mattered  so  much,  for  the 
British  government  refused  to  ratify  the  treaty ;  but 
it  was  not  all.  Colonel  Nichols,  as  if  determined  to 
give  us  as  much  trouble  as  he  could,  built  a  strong 
fortress  on  the  Appalachicola  River,  and  gave  it  to 
his  friends  the  Seminoles,  naming  it  "The  British 
Post  on  the  Appalachicola,"  where  the  British  had 
not  the  least  right  to  have  any  post  whatever.  Situ- 
ated on  a  high  bluff,  with  flanks  securely  guarded  by 
the  river  on  one  side  and  a  swamp  on  the  other,  this 
fort,  properly  defended,  was  capable  of  resisting  the 


The  Story  of  the  Negro  Fort.  1 5 

assaults  of  almost  any  force  that  could  approach  it; 
and  Colonel  Nichols  was  determined  that  it  should 
be  properly  defended,  and  should  be  a  constant  men- 
ace and  source  of  danger  to  the  United  States.  He 
armed  it  with  one  32 -pounder  cannon,  three  24- 
pounders,  and  eight  other  guns.  In  the  matter  of 
small-arms  he  was  even  more  liberal.  He  supplied 
the  fort  with  2500  muskets,  500  carbines,  400  pistols, 
and  500  swords.  In  the  magazines  he  stored  300 
quarter  casks  of  rifle  powder  and  763  barrels  of  or- 
dinary gunpowder. 

When  Colonel  Nichols  went  away,  his  Seminoles 
soon  wandered  off,  leaving  the  fort  without  a  garri- 
son. This  gave  an  opportunity  to  a  negro  bandit 
and  desperado  named  Gargon  to  seize  the  place, 
which  he  did,  gathering  about  him  a  large  band  of 
runaway  negroes,  Choctaw  Indians,  and  other  lawless 
persons,  whom  he  organized  into  a  strong  company 
of  robbers.  Garcon  made  the  fort  his  stronghold, 
and  began  to  plunder  the  country  round  about  as 
thoroughly  as  any  robber  baron  or  Italian  bandit 


1 6  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

ever  did,  sometimes  venturing  across  the  border  into 
the  United  States. 

All  this  was  so  annoying  and  so  threatening  to  our 
frontier  settlements  in  Georgia,  that  General  Jackson 
demanded  of  the  Spanish  authorities  that  they  should 
reduce  the  place;  and  they  would  have  been  glad 
enough  to  do  so,  probably,  if  it  had  been  possible, 
because  the  banditti  plundered  Spanish  as  well  as 
other  settlements.  But  the  Spanish  governor  had 
no  force  at  command,  and  could  do  nothing,  and  so 
the  fort  remained,  a  standing  menace  to  the  Ameri- 
can borders. 

Matters  were  in  this  position  in  the  spring  of  1816, 
when  General  Gaines  was  sent  to  fortify  our  frontier 
at  the  point  where  the  Chattahoochee  and  Flint  riv- 
ers unite  to  form  the  Appalachicola.  In  June  of  that 
year  some  stores  for  General  Gaines's  forces  were  sent 
by  sea  from  New  Orleans.  The  vessels  carrying 
them  were  to  go  up  the  Appalachicola,  and  General 
Gaines  was  not  sure  that  the  little  fleet  would  be 
permitted  to  pass  the  robbers'  stronghold,  which  had 


The  Story  of  the  Negro  Fort.  1 7 

come  to  be  called  the  Negro  Fort.  Accordingly,  he 
sent  Colonel  Clinch  with  a  small  force  down  the  riv- 
er, to  render  any  assistance  that  might  be  necessary. 
On  the  way  Colonel  Clinch  was  joined  by  a  band  of 
Seminoles,  who  wanted  to  recapture  the  fort  on  their 
own  account,  and  the  two  bodies  determined  to  act 
together. 

Meantime  the  two  schooners  with  supplies  and  the 
two  gun-boats  sent  to  guard  them  had  arrived  at  the 
mouth  of  the  river ;  and  when  the  commandant  tried 
to  hold  a  conference  with  Garcon,  the  ship's  boat, 
bearing  a  white  flag,  was  fired  upon. 

Running  short  of  water  while  lying  off  the  river's 
mouth,  the  officers  of  the  fleet  sent  out  a  boat  to  pro- 
cure a  supply.  This  boat  was  armed  with  a  swivel 
and  muskets,  and  was  commanded  by  Midshipman 
Luffborough.  The  boat  went  into  the  mouth  of 
the  river,  and,  seeing  a  negro  on  shore,  Midshipman 
Luffborough  landed  to  ask  for  fresh-water  supplies. 
Garcon,  with  some  of  his  men,  lay  in  ambush  at  the 
spot,  and  while  the  officer  talked  with  the  negro  the 


1 8  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

concealed  men  fired  upon  the  boat,  killing  Luffbor- 
ough  and  two  of  his  men.  One  man  got  away  by 
swimming,  and  was  picked  up  by  the  fleet ;  two  oth- 
ers were  taken  prisoners,  and,  as  was  afterwards 
learned,  Garc,on  coated  them  with  tar  and  burned 
them  to  death. 

It  would  not  do  to  send  more  boats  ashore,  and  so 
the  little  squadron  lay  together  awaiting  orders  from 
Colonel  Clinch.  That  officer,  as  he  approached  the 
fort,  captured  a  negro,  who  wore  a  white  man's  scalp 
at  his  belt,  and  from  him  he  learned  of  the  massacre 
of  Luff  borough's  party.  There  was  no  further  occa- 
sion for  doubt  as  to  what  was  to  be  done.  Colonel 
Clinch  determined  to  reduce  the  fort  at  any  cost,  al- 
though the  operation  promised  to  be  a  very  difficult 
one. 

Placing  his  men  in  line  of  battle,  he  sent  a  courier 
to  the  fleet,  ordering  the  gun-boats  to  come  up  and 
help  in  the  attack.  The  Seminoles  made  many  dem- 
onstrations against  the  works,  and  the  negroes  replied 
with  their  cannon.  Garc,on  had  raised  his  flags — a 


The  Story  of  the  Negro  Fort.  1 9 

red  one  and  a  British  Union-jack — and  whenever  he 
caught  sight  of  the  Indians  or  the  Americans,  he 
shelled  them  vigorously  with  his  32-pounder. 

Three  or  four  days  were  passed  in  this  way,  while 
the  gun-boats  were  slowly  making  their  way  up  the 
river.  It  was  Colonel  Clinch's  purpose  to  have  the 
gun-boats  shell  the  fort,  while  he  should  storm  it  on 
the  land  side.  The  work  promised  to  be  bloody, 
and  it  was  necessary  to  bring  all  the  available  force 
to  bear  at  once.  There  were  no  siege-guns  at  hand, 
or  anywhere  within  reach,  and  the  only  way  to  re- 
duce the  fort  was  for  the  small  force  of  soldiers — 
numbering  only  one  hundred  and  sixteen  men — to 
rush  upon  it,  receiving  the  fire  of  its  heavy  artillery, 
and  climb  over  its  parapets  in  the  face  of  a  murder- 
ous fire  of  small-arms.  Garcon  had  with  him  three 
hundred  and  thirty-four  men,  so  that,  besides  having 
strong  defensive  works  and  an  abundant  supply  of 
large  cannon,  his  force  outnumbered  Colonel  Clinch's 
nearly  three  to  one.  It  is  true  that  the  American  offi- 
cer had  the  band  of  Seminoles  with  him,  but  they  were 

2 


2O  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

entirely  worthless  for  determined  work  of  the  kind 
that  the  white  men  had  to  do.  Even  while  lying  in 
the  woods  at  a  distance,  waiting  for  the  gun-boats  to 
come  up,  the  Indians  became  utterly  demoralized 
under  the  fire  of  Garcon's  32-pounder.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  done,  however,  by  way  of  improving 
the  prospect,  which  was  certainly  hopeless  enough. 
One  hundred  and  sixteen  white  men  had  the  Negro 
Fort  to  storm,  notwithstanding  its  strength  and  the 
overwhelming  force  that  defended  it.  But  those  one 
hundred  and  sixteen  men  were  American  soldiers, 
under  command  of  a  brave  and  resolute  officer,  who 
had  made  up  his  mind  that  the  fort  could  be  taken, 
and  they  were  prepared  to  follow  their  leader  up  to 
the  muzzle  of  the  guns  and  over  the  ramparts,  there 
to  fight  the  question  out  in  a  hand-to-hand  struggle 
with  the  desperadoes  inside. 

Finally  the  gun -boats  arrived,  and  preparations 
were  made  for  the  attack.  Sailing-master  Jairus  Loo- 
mis,  the  commandant  of  the  little  fleet,  cast  his  an- 
chors under  the  guns  of  the  Negro  Fort  at  five  o'clock 


The  Story  of  the  Negro  Fort.  2 1 

in  the  morning  on  the  27th  of  July,  1816.  The  fort 
at  once  opened  fire,  and  it  seemed  impossible  for  the 
little  vessels  to  endure  the  storm  of  shot  and  shell 
that  rained  upon  them  from  the  ramparts  above. 
They  replied  vigorously,  however,  but  with  no  ef- 
fect. Their  guns  were  too  small  to  make  any  im- 
pression upon  the  heavy  earthen  walls  of  the  for- 
tress. 

Sailing-master  Loomis  had  roused  his  ship's  cook 
early  that  morning,  and  had  given  him  a  strange 
breakfast  to  cook.  He  had  ordered  him  to  make  all 
the  fire  he  could  in  his  galley,  and  to  fill  the  fire  with 
cannon-balls.  Not  long  after  the  bombardment  began 
the  cook  reported  that  breakfast  was  ready ;  that  is 
to  say,  that  the  cannon-balls  were  red-hot.  Loomis 
trained  one  of  his  guns  with  his  own  hands  so  that 
its  shot  should  fall  within  the  fort,  instead  of  burying 
itself  in  the  ramparts,  and  this  gun  was  at  once  load- 
ed with  a  red-hot  shot.  The  word  was  given,  the 
match  applied,  and  the  glowing  missile  sped  on  its 
way.  A  few  seconds  later  the  earth  shook  and 


22  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

quivered,  a  deafening  roar  stunned  the  sailors,  and 
a  vast  cloud  of  smoke  filled  the  air,  shutting  out 
the  sun. 

The  hot  shot  had  fallen  into  the  great  magazine, 
where  there  were  hundreds  of  barrels  of  gunpowder, 
and  the  Negro  Fort  was  no  more.  It  had  been  lit- 
erally blown  to  atoms  in  a  second. 

The  slaughter  was  frightful.  There  were,  as  we 
know  already,  three  hundred  and  thirty-four  men  in 
the  fort,  and  two  hundred  and  seventy  of  them  were 
killed  outright  by  the  explosion.  All  the  rest,  ex- 
cept three  men  who  miraculously  escaped  injury, 
were  wounded,  most  of  them  so  badly  that  they  died 
soon  afterwards. 

One  of  the  three  men  who  escaped  the  explosion  un- 
hurt was  Grarcon  himself.  Bad  as  this  bandit  chief  was, 
Colonel  Clinch  would  have  spared  his  life,  but  it  hap- 
pened that  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  sailors  from 
the  gun-boat;  and  when  they  learned  that  Garcon 
had  tarred  and  burned  their  comrades  whom  he  had 
captured  in  the  attack  on  Luff  borough's  boat,  they 


The  Story  of  the  Negro  Fort.  25 

turned  him  over  to  the  infuriated  Seminoles,  who  put 
him  to  death  in  their  own  cruel  way. 

This  is  the  history  of  a  strange  affair,  which  at  one 
time  promised  to  give  the  government  of  the  United 
States  no  little  trouble,  even  threatening  to  involve 
us  in  a  war  with  Spain,  for  the  fort  was  on  Spanish 
territory,  and  the  Spaniards  naturally  resented  an  in- 
vasion of  their  soil. 


A  WAR  FOR  AN  ARCHBISHOP. 

THE  CURIOUS  STORY   OF   VLADIMIR  THE   GREAT. 

IN  the  latter  part  of  the  tenth  century  Sviatozlaf 
was  Grand  Prince  of  Russia.  He  was  a  powerful 
prince,  but  a  turbulent  one,  and  he  behaved  so  ill 
towards  his  neighbors  that,  when  an  opportunity  of- 
fered, one  of  them  converted  his  skull  into  a  gold- 
mounted  drinking -cup,  with  an  inscription  upon  it, 
and  his  dominions  were  .parcelled  out  between  his 
three  sons — Yaropolk,  Oleg,  and  Vladimir. 

Yaropolk,  finding  his  possessions  too  small  for  his 
ambition,  made  war  on  Oleg,  and  conquered  his  ter- 
ritory; but  his  brother  Oleg  having  been  killed  in 
the  war,  the  tender-hearted  Yaropolk  wept  bitterly 
over  his  corpse. 

The  other  brother,  Vladimir,  was  so  grieved  at  the 
death  of  Oleg  that  he  abandoned  his  capital,  Novgo- 


A  War  for  an  Archbishop.  27 

rod,  and  remained  for  a  time  in  seclusion.  Yaropolk 
seized  the  opportunity  thus  offered,  and  made  him- 
self master  of  Vladimir's  dominions  also.  Not  long  af- 
terwards Vladimir  appeared  at  the  head  of  an  army, 
and  Yaropolk  ran  away  to  his  own  capital,  Kiev. 
Vladimir  at  once  resumed  the  throne,  and  sent  word 
to  Yaropolk  that  he  would  in  due  time  return  the 
hostile  visit. 

About  this  time  Yaropolk  and  Vladimir  both 
asked  for  the  hand  of  the  Princess  Rogneda,  of  Po- 
lotzk,  irf  marriage;  and  the  father  of  the  princess, 
fearing  to  offend  either  of  the  royal  barbarians,  left 
the  choice  to  Rogneda  herself.  She  chose  Yaropolk, 
sending  a  very  insulting  message  to  Vladimir,  where- 
upon that  prince  marched  against  Polotzk,  conquered 
the  province,  and  with  his  own  hand  slew  the  father 
and  brothers  of  the  princess.  Then,  with  their  blood 
still  unwashed  from  his  hands,  he  forced  Rogneda  to 
marry  him. 

Having  attended  to  this  matter,  Vladimir  under- 
took to  return  his  brother's  hostile  visit,  as  he  had 


28  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

promised  to  do.  Yaropolk's  capital,  Kiev,  was  a 
strongly  fortified  place,  and  capable  of  a  stout  resist- 
ance; but  Vladimir  corrupted  Blude,  one  of  Yaro- 
polk's ministers,  paying  him  to  betray  his  master, 
and  promising,  in  the  event  of  success,  to  heap  hon- 
ors on  his  head.  Blude  worked  upon  Yaropolk's 
fears,  and  persuaded  him  to  abandon  the  capital 
without  a  struggle,  and  Vladimir  took  possession  of 
the  throne  and  the  country.  Even  in  his  exile,  how- 
ever, Yaropolk  had  no  peace.  Blude  frightened  him 
with  false  stories,  and  persuaded  him  to  remove  from 
place  to  place,  until  his  mind  and  body  were  worn 
out,  when,  at  Blude's  suggestion,  he  determined  to 
surrender  himself,  and  trust  to  the  mercy  of  Vladimir. 
That  good-natured  brother  ordered  the  betrayed  and 
distressed  prince  to  be  put  to  death. 

Then  Vladimir  rewarded  Blude.  He  entertained 
him  in  princely  fashion,  declaring  to  his  followers 
that  he  was  deeply  indebted  to  this  man  for  his 
faithful  services,  and  heaping  all  manner  of  honors 
upon  him.  But  at  the  end  of  three  days  he  said  to 


A  War  for  an  Archbishop.  29 

Blude:  "I  have  kept  my  promise  strictly.  I  have 
received  you  with  welcome,  and  heaped  unwonted 
honors  upon  your  head.  This  I  have  done  as  your 
friend.  To-day,  as  judge,  I  condemn  the  traitor  and 
the  murderer  of  his  prince."  He  ordered  that  Blude 
should  suffer  instant  death,  and  the  sentence  was 
executed. 

Now  that  both  Oleg  and  Yaropolk  were  dead, 
Vladimir  was  Grand  Prince  of  all  the  Russias,  as  his 
father  before  him  had  been.  He  invaded  Poland, 
and  made  war  upon  various  others  of  his  neighbors, 
greatly  enlarging  his  dominions  and  strengthening 
his  rule. 

But  Vladimir  was  a  very  pious  prince  in  his  hea- 
then way,  and  feeling  that  the  gods  had  greatly  fa- 
vored him,  he  made  rich  feasts  of  thanksgiving  in 
their  honor.  He  ordered  splendid  memorials  to  vari- 
ous deities  to  be  erected  throughout  the  country,  and 
he  specially  honored  Perune,  the  father  of  the  gods, 
for  whom  he  provided  a  new  pair  of  golden  whiskers 
— golden  whiskers  being  the  special  glory  of  Perune, 


3O  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

Not  content  with  this,  Vladimir  ordered  a  human 
sacrifice  to  be  made,  and  selected  for  the  victim  a 
Christian  youth  of  the  capital.  The  father  of  the 
boy  resisted,  and  both  were  slain,  locked  in  each  oth« 
er's  arms. 

Vladimir  gave  vast  sums  of  money  to  the  religious 
establishments,  and  behaved  generally  like  a  very 
devout  pagan.  His  piety  and  generosity  made  him 
so  desirable  a  patron  that  efforts  were  made  by  the 
priests  of  other  religions  to  convert  him.  Jews,  Mo- 
hammedans, Catholics,  and  Greeks  all  sought  to  win 
him,  and  Vladimir  began  seriously  to  consider  the 
question  of  changing  his  religion.  He  appointed  a 
commission,  consisting  of  ten  boyards,  and  ordered 
them  to  examine  into  the  comparative  merits  of  the 
different  religions,  and  to  report  to  him.  When  their  re- 
port was  made, Vladimir  weighed  the  matter  carefully. 

He  began  by  rejecting  Mohammedanism,  because 
it  forbids  the  use  of  wine,  and  Vladimir  was  not  at 
all  disposed  to  become  a  water-drinker.  Judaism,  he 
said,  was  a  homeless  religion,  its  followers  being  wan- 


A  War  for  an  Archbishop.  31 

derers  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  under  a  curse;  so 
he  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  that  faith.  The 
Catholic  religion  would  not  do  at  all,  because  it  rec- 
ognized in  the  pope  a  superior  to  himself,  and  Vladi- 
mir had  no  mind  to  acknowledge  a  superior.  The 
Greek  religion  was  free  from  these  objections,  and, 
moreover,  by  adopting  it  he  would  bring  himself  into 
friendship  with  the  great  Greek  or  Byzantine  Em- 
pire, whose  capital  was  at  Constantinople,  and  that  was 
something  which  he  earnestly  desired  to  accomplish. 
Accordingly,  he  determined  to  become  a  Christian 
and  a  member  of  the  Greek  Church ;  but  how  ? 
There  were  serious  difficulties  in  the  way.  In  order 
to  become  a  Christian  he  must  be  baptized,  and  he  was 
puzzled  about  how  to  accomplish  that.  There  were 
many  Greek  priests  in  his  capital,  any  one  of  whom 
would  have  been  glad  to  baptize  the  heathen  mon- 
arch, but  Vladimir  would  not  let  a  mere  priest  con- 
vert him  into  a  Christian.  Nobody  less  than  an  arch- 
bishop would  do  for  that,  and  there  was  no  archbish- 
op in  Russia. 


32  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

It  is  true  that  there  were  plenty  of  archbishops  in 
the  dominions  of  his  Byzantine  neighbors,  and  that 
the  Greek  emperors,  Basil  and  Constantiue,  would 
have  been  glad  to  send  him  a  dozen  of  them  if  he 
had  expressed  a  wish  to  that  effect;  but  Vladimir 
was  proud,  and  could  not  think  of  asking  a  favor  of 
anybody,  least  of  all  of  the  Greek  emperors.  No,  he 
would  die  a  heathen  rather  than  ask  for  an  archbish- 
op to  baptize  him. 

Nevertheless,  Vladimir  had  fully  made  up  his  mind 
to  have  himself  baptized  by  an  archbishop.  It  was 
his  lifelong  habit,  when  he  wanted  anything,  to  take 
it  by  force.  He  had  taken  two  thirds  of  his  domin- 
ions in  that  way,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  it  was  in  that 
way  that  he  got  his  wife  Rogneda.  So  now  that  he 
wanted  an  archbishop,  he  determined  to  take  one. 
'Calling  his  army  together,  he  declared  war  on  the 
Greek  emperors,  and  promising  his  soldiers  all  the 
pillage  they  wanted,  he  marched  away  towards  Con- 
stantinople. 

The  first  serious  obstacle  he  met  with  was  the  for- 


A   War  for  an  Archbishop.  33 

tified  city  of  Kherson, .situated  near  the  spot  where 
Sebastopol  stands  in  our  day.  Here  the  resistance 
was  so  obstinate  that  month  after  month  was  con- 
sumed in  siege  operations.  At  the  end  of  six  months 
Vladimir  became  seriously  alarmed  lest  the  garrison 
should  be  succored  from  without,  in  which  case  his 
hope  of  getting  himself  converted  into  a  Christian 
must  be  abandoned  altogether. 

While  he  was  troubled  on  this  score,  however,  one 
of  his  soldiers  picked  up  an  arrow  that  had  been  shot 
from  the  city,  and  found  a  letter  attached  to  it.  This 
letter  informed  the  Grand  Prince  that  the  water-pipes 
of  the  city  received  their  supplies  at  a  point  immedi- 
ately in  his  rear,  and  with  this  news  Vladimir's  hope 
of  becoming  a  Christian  revived.  He  found  the  wa- 
ter-pipes and  stopped  them  up,  and  the  city  surren- 
dered. 

There  were  plenty  of  bishops  and  archbishops 
there,  of  course,  and  they  were  perfectly  willing — as 
they  had  been  from  the  first,  for  that  matter — to  bap- 
tize the  unruly  royal  convert,  but  Vladimir  was  not 


34  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

content  now  with  that.  He  sent  a  messenger  to  Con- 
stantinople to  tell  the  emperors  there  that  he  wanted 
their  sister,  the  Princess  Anne,  for  a  wife ;  and  that  if 
they  refused,  he  would  march  against  Constantinople 
itself.  The  Emperors  Basil  and  Constantine  consent- 
ed, and  although  Vladimir  had  five  wives  already,  he 
married  Anne,  and  was  baptized  on  the  same  day. 

Having  now  become  a  Christian,  the  Grand  Prince 
determined  that  his  Russians  should  do  the  same. 
He  publicly  stripped  the  god  Perune  of  his  gorgeous 
golden  whiskers,  and  of  his  rich  vestments,  showing 
the  people  that  Perune  was  only  a  log  of  wood. 
Then  he  had  the  deposed  god  whipped  in  public,  and 
thrown  into  the  river,  with  all  the  other  gods. 

He  next  ordered  all  the  people  of  his  capital  city  to 
assemble  on  the  banks  of  the  Dnieper  River,  and,  at 
a  signal,  made  them  all  rush  into  the  water,  while 
a  priest  pronounced  the  baptismal  service  over  the 
whole  population  of  the  city  at  once.  It  was  the 
most  wholesale  baptism  ever  performed. 

That  is  the  way  in  which  Russia  was  changed  from 


A  War  for  an  Archbishop.  37 

a  pagan  to  a  Christian  empire.  The  story  reads  like 
a  romance,  but  it  is  plain,  well-authenticated  history. 
For  his  military  exploits  the  Russian  historians  call 
this  prince  Vladimir  the  Great.  The  people  call  him 
St.  Vladimir,  the  Greek  Church  having  enrolled  his 

'  O 

name  among  the  saints  soon  after  his  death.  He  was 
undoubtedly  a  man  of  rare  military  skill,  and  unusu- 
al ability  in  the  government  of  men.  Bad  as  his  acts 
were,  he  seems  to  have  had  a  conscience,  and  to  have 
done  his  duty  so  far  as  he  wras  capable  of  understand- 
ing it. 


THE  BOY  COMMANDEK  OF  THE  CAMISARDS. 


Louis  XIV.  was  King  of  France,  that  couii. 
try  was  generally  Catholic,  as  it  is  still,  but  in  the 
rugged  mountain  region  called  the  Cevennes  more 
than  half  the  people  were  Protestants.  At  first  the 
king  consented  that  these  Protestant  people,  who 
were  well  behaved  both  in  peace  and  in  war,  should 
live  in  quiet,  and  worship  as  they  pleased  ;  but  in 
those  days  men  were  not  tolerant  in  matters  of  relig- 
ion, as  they  are  now,  and  so  after  a  while  King  Louis 
made  up  his  mind  that  he  would  compel  all  his  peo- 
ple to  believe  alike.  The  Protestants  of  the  Cevennes 
were  required  to  give  up  their  religion  and  to  be- 
come Catholics.  When  they  refused,  soldiers  were 
sent  to  compel  them,  and  great  cruelties  were  prac- 
tised upon  them.  Many  of  them  were  killed,  many 
put  in  prison,  and  many  sent  to  work  in  the  galleya 


The  Boy  Commander  of  the  Camisards.         39 

When  this  persecution  had  lasted  for  nearly  thirty 
years,  a  body  of  young  men  who  were  gathered  to- 
gether in  the  High  Cevennes  resolved  to  defend  them- 
selves by  force.  They  secured  arms,  and  although 
their  numbers  were  very  small,  they  met  and  fought 
the  troops. 

Among  these  young  men  was  one,  a  mere  boy, 
named  Jean  Cavalier.  His  home  was  in  the  Lower 
Cevennes,  but  he  had  fled  to  the  highlands  for  safety. 
This  boy,  without  knowing  it,  had  military  genius 
of  a  very  high  order,  and  when  it  became  evident 
that  he  and  his  comrades  could  not  long  hold  out 
against  the  large  bodies  of  regular  troops  sent  against 
them,  he  suggested  a  plan  which  in  the  end  proved 
to  be  so  good  that  for  years  the  poor  peasants  were 
able  to  maintain  war  against  all  the  armies  that  King 
Louis  could  send  against  them,  although  he  sent 
many  of  his  finest  generals  and  as  many  as  sixty 
thousand  men  to  subdue  them. 

Cavalier's  plan  was  to  collect  more  men,  divide,  and 
make  uprisings  in  several  places  at  once,  so  that  the 


40  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

king's  officers  could  not  tell  in  which  way  to  turi,. 
As  he  and  his  comrades  knew  the  country  well,  and 
had  friends  to  tell  them  of  the  enemy's  movements, 
they  could  nearly  always  know  when  it  was  safe  to 
attack,  and  when  they  must  hide  in  the  woods. 

Cavalier  took  thirty  men  and  went  into  one  part 
of  the  country,  while  Captain  La  Porte,  with  a  like 
number,  went  to  another,  and  Captain  St.  John  to 
still  another.  They  kept  each  other  informed  of  all 
movements,  and  whenever  one  was  pressed  by  the 
enemy,  the  others  would  begin  burning  churches  or 
attacking  small  garrisons.  The  enemy  would  thus  be 
compelled  to  abandon  the  pursuit  of  one  party  in  order 
to  go  after  the  others,  and  it  soon  became  evident  that 
under  Cavalier's  lead  the  peasants  were  too  wily  and 
too  strong  for  the  soldiers.  Sometimes  Cavalier  would 
fairly  beat  detachments  of  his  foes,  and  give  them 
chase,  killing  all  whom  he  caught;  for  in  that  war 
both  sides  did  this,  even  killing  their  prisoners  with- 
out mercy.  At  other  times  Cavalier  was  worsted  in 
fight,  and  when  that  was  the  case  he  fled  to  the 


The  Boy  Commander  of  ihe  Camisards.        4 1 

woods,  collected  more  men,  and  waited  for  another 
chance. 

Without  trying  to  write  an  orderly  history  of  the 
war,  for  which  there  is  not  space  enough  here,  I  shall 
now  tell  some  stories  of  Cavalier's  adventures,  draw- 
ing the  information  chiefly  from  a  book  which  he 
himself  wrote  years  afterwards,  when  he  was  a  cele- 
brated man  and  a  general  in  the  British  army. 

One  Sunday  Cavalier,  who  was  a  preacher  as  well 
as  a  soldier,  held  services  in  his  camp  in  the  woods, 
and  all  the  Protestant  peasants  in  the  neighborhood 
attended.  The  Governor  of  Alais,  whose  name  was 
De  la  Hay,  thought  this  a  good  opportunity  not  only 
to  defeat  Cavalier's  small  force,  but  also  to  catch  the 
Protestant  women  and  children  in  the  act  of  attend- 
ing a  Protestant  service,  the  punishment  for  which 
was  death.  He  collected  a  force  of  about  six  hun- 
dred men,  cavalry  and  infantry,  and  marched  towards 
the  wood,  where  he  knew  he  should  outnumber  the 
peasants  three  or  four  to  one.  He  had  a  mule  loaded 
with  ropes,  declaring  that  he  was  going  to  hang  all 
the  rebels  at  once. 


42  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

When  news  of  De  la  Hay's  coming  was  brought  to 
the  peasants,  they  sent  away  all  the  country  people, 
women,  and  children,  and  began  to  discuss  the  situa- 
tion. They  had  no  commander,  for  although  Cava- 
lier had  led  them  generally,  he  had  no  authority  to 
do  so.  Everything  was  voluntary,  and  everything  a 
subject  of  debate.  On  this  occasion  many  thought  it 
best  to  retreat  at  once,  as  there  were  less  than  two 
hundred  of  them ;  but  Cavalier  declared  that  if  they 
would  follow  him,  he  would  lead  them  to  a  place 
where  victory  might  be  won.  They  consented,  and 
he  advanced  to  a  point  on  the  road  where  he  could 
shelter  his  men.  Quickly  disposing  them  in  line  of 
battle  behind  some  defences,  he  awaited  the  coming 
of  the  enemy. 

De  la  Hay,  being  over-confident  because  of  his  su- 
perior numbers,  blundered  at  the  outset.  Instead  of 
attacking  first  with  his  infantry,  he  placed  his  horse- 
men in  front,  and  ordered  an  assault.  Cavalier  was 
quick  to  take  advantage  of  this  blunder.  He  ordered 
only  a  few  of  his  men  to  fire,  and  this  drew  a  volley 


The  Boy  Commander  of  the  Camisards.        43 

from  the  advancing  horsemen,  which  did  little  dam- 
age to  the  sheltered  troops,  but  emptied  the  horse- 
men's weapons.  Instantly  Cavalier  ordered  a  charge 
and  a  volley,  and  the  horsemen,  with  empty  pistols, 
gave  way,  Cavalier  pursuing  them.  De  la  Hay's  in- 
fantry, being  just  behind  the  horsemen,  were  ridden 
down  by  their  own  friends,  and  became  confused  and 
panic  -  stricken.  Cavalier  pursued  hotly,  his  men 
throwing  off  their  coats  to  lighten  themselves,  and 
giving  the  enemy  no  time  to  rally.  A  reinforcement 
two  hundred  strong,  coming  up,  tried  to  check  Cava- 
lier's charge;  but  so  impetuous  was  the  onset  that 
these  fresh  troops  gave  way  in  their  turn,  and  the 
chase  ended  only  when  the  king's  men  had  shut 
themselves  up  in  the  fortified  towns.  Cavalier  had 
Jost  only  five  or  six  men,  the  enemy  losing  a  hundred 
killed  and  many  more  wounded.  Cavalier  captured 
a  large  quantity  of  arms  and  ammunition,  of  which 
he  was  in  sore  need. 

When  the  battle  was  over  it  was  decided  uuani 
mously  to  make  Cavalier  the  commander.     He  re- 


44  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

fused,  however,  to  accept  the  responsibility  unless  it 
could  be  accompanied  with  power  to  enforce  obedi- 
ence, and  his  troops  at  once  voted  to  make  his  au- 
thority absolute,  even  to  the  decision  of  questions  of 
life  and  death.  According  to  the  best  authorities, 
Cavalier  was  only  seventeen  years  old  when  this  ab- 
solute command  was  conferred  upon  him.  How  skil- 
fully he  used  the  scant  means  at  his  disposal  we  shall 
see  hereafter. 

On  one  occasion  Cavalier  attacked  a  party  of  forty 
men  who  were  marching  through  the  country  to  re. 
inforce  a  distant  post,  and  killed  most  of  them. 
While  searching  the  dead  bodies,  he  found  in  the 
pocket  of  the  commanding  officer  an  order  signed  by 
Count  Broglio,  the  king's  lieutenant,  directing  all 
military  officers  and  town  authorities  to  lodge  and 
feed  the  party  on  their  march.  No  sooner  had  the 
boy  soldier  read  this  paper  than  he  resolved  to  turn 
it  to  his  own  advantage  in  a  daring  and  dangerous 
way. 

The  castle  of  Servas,  near  Alais,  had  long  been  a 


The  Boy  Commander  of  the  Camisards.        45 

source  of  trouble  to  him.  It  was  a  strong  place,  built 
upon  a  steep  hill,  and  was  so  difficult  of  approach 
that  it  would  have  been  madness  to  try  to  take  it  by 
force.  This  castle  stood  right  in  the  line  of  Cava- 
lier's communications  with  his  friends,  near  a  road 
which  he  was  frequently  obliged  to  pass,  and  its 
presence  there  was  a  source  of  annoyance  and  danger 
to  him.  Moreover,  its  garrison  of  about  forty  men 
were  constantly  plundering  and  murdering  Cavalier's 
friends  in  the  country  round  about,  and  giving  timely 
notice  to  his  enemies  of  his  own  military  movements. 
When  he  found  the  order  referred  to  he  resolved 
to  pretend  that  he  was  Count  Broglio's  nephew,  the 
dead  commander  of  the  detachment  which  he  had 
just  destroyed.  Dressing  himself  in  that  officer's 
clothes,  he  ordered  his  men  to  put  on  the  clothing  of 
the  other  dead  royalists.  Then  he  took  six  of  his 
best  men,  with  their  own  Camisard  uniforms  on,  and 
bound  them  with  ropes,  to  represent  prisoners.  One 
of  them  had  been  wounded  in  the  arm,  and  his  bloody 
sleeve  helped  the  stratagem.  Putting  these  six  men 


46  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

at  the  head  of  his  troop,  with  a  guard  of  their  dis- 
guised comrades  over  them,  he  marched  towards  the 
Castle  of  Servas.  There  he  declared  himself  to  be 
Count  Broglio's  nephew,  and  said  that  he  had  met  a 
company  of  the  Barbets,  or  Camisards,  and  had  de- 
feated them,  taking  six  prisoners ;  that  he  was  afraid 
to  keep  these  prisoners  in  the  village  overnight  lest 
their  friends  should  rescue  them ;  and  that  he  wished 
to  lodge  them  in  the  castle  for  safety.  When  the 
governor  of  the  castle  heard  this  story,  and  saw  the 
order  of  Count  Broglio,  he  was  completely  imposed 
upon.  He  ordered  the  prisoners  to  be  brought  into 
the  castle,  and  invited  Cavalier  to  be  his  guest  there 
for  the  night.  Taking  two  of  his  officers  with  him, 
Cavalier  went  into  the  castle  to  sup  with  the  govern- 
or. During  supper  several  of  his  soldiers,  who  were 
encamped  just  outside,  went  into  the  castle  upon  pre- 
tence of  getting  wine  or  bread,  and  when  five  or  six 
of  them  were  in,  at  a  signal  from.  Cavalier,  they  over- 
powered the  sentinels  and  threw  the  gates  open.  The 
rest  of  the  troop  rushed  in  at  once,  and  before  the 


The  Boy  Commander  of  the  Camisards.        49 

garrison  could  seize  their  arms  the  boy  commander 
was  master  of  the  fortress.  He  put  the  garrison  to 
the  sword,  and,  hastily  collecting  all  the  arms,  ammu- 
nition, and  provisions  he  could  find,  set  fire  to  the 
castle  and  marched  away.  When  the  fire  reached 
the  powder  magazine  the  whole  fortress  was  blown 
to  fragments,  and  a  post  which  had  long  annoyed  and 
endangered  the  Camisards  was  no  more. 

On  another  occasion,  finding  himself  short  of  am- 
munition, Cavalier  resolved  to  take  some  by  force  and 
stratagem  from  the  strongly  fortified  town  of  Savues. 
His  first  care  was  to  send  a  detachment  of  forty  men 
to  a  point  at  some  distance,  with  orders  to  burn  a 
church  which  had  lately  been  fortified, "  thereby,"  he 
says,  "  to  make  the  inhabitants  of  Savnes  believe  we 
were  busy  in  another  place."  Then  he  detached  an 
officer  and  fifty  men,  and  ordered  them  to  disguise 
themselves  as  country  militia  in  the  king's  service, 
and  to  go  into  Savnes  in  that  character.  With  some 
difficulty  this  officer  accomplished  his  purpose,  and 
then  Roland  and  Cavalier  marched  upon  the  place. 


50  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

His  officer  inside  the  town,  when  the  alarm  was  given, 
said  to  the  governor,  "  Let  them  come ;  you'll  see  how 
I'll  receive  them."  Anxious  for  his  own  safety,  the 
governor  permitted  the  supposed  officer  of  militia  to 
take  charge  of  the  defence,  and  the  armed  citizens 
put  themselves  under  his  command.  He  instructed 
the  citizens  to  reserve  their  fire  until  he  should  give 
them  orders,  and  in  that  way  enabled  Cavalier  to 
approach  unharmed.  Suddenly  the  officer,  directing 
the  aim  of  his  men  against  the  citizens,  ordered  them 
to  throw  down  their  arms  upon  pain  of  instant  death, 
and  they,  seeing  themselves  caught  in  a  trap,  obeyed. 
Cavalier  marched  in  without  opposition,  secured  all 
that  he  could  carry  away  of  arms,  ammunition,  and 
provisions,  and  retired  to  the  woods. 

Throughout  the  summer  and  autumn  the  boy  car- 
ried on  his  part  of  the  war,  nearly  always  getting  the 
.better  of  his  enemies  by  his  shrewdness  and  valor, 
and  when  that  was  impossible,  eluding  them  with 
equal  shrewdness.  During  that  first  campaign  he  de- 
stroyed many  fortified  places,  won  many  fights  against 


The  Boy  Commander  of  the  Camisards.        5 1 

superior  numbers  of  regular  troops,  and  killed  far  more 
soldiers  for  the  enemy  than  he  had  under  his  own  com- 
mand. Failing  to  conquer  him  by  force  or  strategy,  his 
foes  fell  back  upon  the  confident  hope  of  starving  him 
during  the  winter,  for  he  must  pass  the  winter  in  the 
forests,  with  no  bases  of  supply  to  draw  upon  for  either 
food  or  ammunition.  But  in  indulging  this  hope  his 
enemies  forgot  that  the  crown  and  glory  of  his  achieve- 
ments in  the  field  had  been  his  marvellous  fertility  of 
resource.  The  very  qualities  which  had  made  him  for- 
midable in  fight  were  his  safeguard  for  the  winter. 
He  knew  quite  as  well  as  they  did  that  he  must  live 
all  winter  in  the  woods  surrounded  by  foes,  and, 
knowing  the  difficulty  of  doing  so,  he  gave  his  whole 
mind  to  the  question  of  how  to  do  it. 

He  began  during  the  harvest  to  make  his  prepara- 
tions. He  explored  all  the  caves  in  the  mountains, 
and  selected  the  most  available  ones  for  use  as  mag- 
azines, taking  care  to  have  them  in  all  parts  of  the 
mountains,  so  that  if  cut  off  from  one  he  could  draw 
upon  another.  In  these  caves  he  stored  great  quan- 


52  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

titles  of  grain  and  other  provisions,  and  during  the 
winter,  whenever  he  needed  meal,  some  of  his  men, 
who  were  millers,  would  carry  grain  to  some  lonely 
country  mill  and  grind  it.  To  prevent  this,  the 
king's  officers  ordered  that  all  the  country  mills 
should  be  disabled  and  rendered  unfit  for  use ;  but 
before  the  order  could  be  executed,  Cavalier  directed 
some  of  his  men,  who  were  skilled  machinists,  to  dis- 
able two  or  three  of  the  mills  by  carrying  away  the 
essential  parts  of  their  machinery  and  storing  them 
in  his  caves.  Then,  when  he  wanted  meal,  his  ma- 
chinists had  only  to  replace  the  machinery  in  some 
disabled  mill,  and  remove  it  again  after  his  millers 
had  done  the  necessary  grinding.  His  bakers  made 
use  of  farmers'  ovens  to  bake  bread  in,  and  when  the 
king's  soldiers,  hearing  of  this,  destroyed  the  ovens, 
Cavalier  sent  his  masons  —  for  he  had  all  sorts  of 
craftsmen  in  his  ranks — to  rebuild  them. 

Having  two  powder-makers  with  him,  he  collected 
saltpetre,  burned  willow  twigs  for  charcoal,  and  made 
all  the  powder  he  needed  in  his  caves.  Before  doing 


The  Boy  Commander  of  the  Camisards.         53 

so  he  had  been  obliged  to  resort  to  many  device*  m 
order  to  get  powder,  sometimes  disguising  himself  as 
a  merchant  and  going  into  a  town  and  buying  small 
quantities  at  a  time,  so  that  suspicion  might  not  be 
awakened,  until  he  secured  enough  to  fill  his  port- 
manteau. 

For  bullets  he  melted  down  the  leaden  weights  of 
windows,  and  when  that  source  of  supply  failed  he 
melted  pewter  vessels  and  used  pewter  bullets — 
a  fact  which  gave  rise  to  the  belief  that  he  used 
poisoned  balls.  Finally,  in  a  dyer's  establishment,  he 
had  the  good  luck  to  find  two  great  leaden  kettles, 
weighing  more  than  seven  hundred  quintals,  which, 
he  says,  "  I  caused  immediately  to  be  carried  into  the 
magazines  with  as  much  diligence  and  care  as  if  they 
had  been  silver." 

Chiefly  by  Cavalier's  tireless  energy  and  wonderful 
military  skill,  the  war  was  kept  up  against  fearful 
odds  for  years,  and  finally  the  young  soldier  succeed- 
ed in  making  a  treaty  of  peace  in  which  perfect  lib- 
erty of  conscience  and  worship — which  was  all  he 


54  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

had  been  fighting  for — was  guaranteed  to  the  Protes- 
tants of  the  Cevennes.  His  friends  rejected  this 
treaty,  however,  and  Cavalier  soon  afterwards  went 
to  Holland,  where  he  was  given  command  of  a  regi- 
ment in  the  English  service.  His  career  in  arms  was 
a  brilliant  one,  so  brilliant  that  the  British  made  him 
a  general  and  governor  of  the  island  of  Jersey ;  but 
he  nowhere  showed  greater  genius  or  manifested 
higher  soldierly  qualities  than  during  the  time  when 
he  was  the  Boy  Commander  of  the  Camisards0 


THE  CANOE   FIGHT. 

AN   INCIDENT   OF   THE   CREEK   WAR. 

THE  smallest  naval  battle  ever  fought  in  the  world, 
perhaps,  occurred  on  the  Alabama  River  on  the  13th 
of  November,  1813,  between  two  canoes,  and  this  is 
the  way  in  which  it  happened. 

The  United  States  were  at  war  with  Great  Britain 
at  that  time,  and  a  war  with  Spain  was  also  threat- 
ened. The  British  had  stirred  up  the  Indians  in  the 
Northwest  to  make  war  upon  the  whites,  and  in  1813 
they  persuaded  the  Creek  Indians  of  Alabama  and 
Mississippi  to  begin  a  war  there. 

The  government  troops  were  so  busy  with  the 
British  in  other  quarters  of  the  country  that  very  lit- 
tle could  be  done  for  the  protection  of  the  white  set- 
tlers in  the  Southwest,  and  for  a  good  while  they 
had  to  take  care  of  themselves  in  the  best  way  they 


56  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

could.  Leaving  their  homes,  they  gathered  together 
here  and  there  and  built  rude  stockade  forts,  in  which 
they  lived,  with  all  their  women  and  children.  All 
the  men,  including  all  the  boys  who  were  old  enough 
to  pull  a  trigger — and  frontier  boys  learn  to  use  a  gun 
very  early  in  life — were  organized  into  companies  of 
volunteer  soldiers. 

At  Fort  Madison,  one  of  the  smallest  of  the  forts, 
there  was  a  very  daring  frontiersman,  named  Samuel 
(or  Sam)  Dale — a  man  who  had  lived  much  with  the 
Indians,  and  was  like  them  in  many  respects,  even  in 
his  dress  and  manners.  Hearing  that  the  Indians 
were  in  force  on  the  southeastern  bank  of  the  Ala- 
bama River,  the  people  in  Fort  Madison  were  greatly 
alarmed,  fearing  that  all  the  crops  in  that  region — 
which  were  ripe  in  the  fields — would  be  destroyed. 
If  that  should  occur,  they  knew  they  must  starve 
during  the  coming  winter,  and  so  they  made  up  their 
minds  to  drive  the  savages  away,  at  least  until  they 
could  gather  the  corn. 

Captain  Dale  at  once  made  up  a  party,  consisting 


The  Canoe  Fight.  57 

of  seventy-two  men,  all  volunteers.  With  this  force 
he  set  out  on  the  llth  of  November,  taking  Tandy 
Walker,  a  celebrated  scout,  for  his  guide.  The  col 
umn  marched  to  the  Alabama  River,  and  crossed  it 
at  a  point  about  twenty  miles  below  the  present 
town  of  Claiborne. 

Once  across  the  river,  Dale  knew  that  he  was 
among  the  Indians,  and,  knowing  their  ways,  he  was 
as  watchful  as  if  he  had  been  one  of  them  himself. 
He  forbade  his  men  to  sleep  at  all  during  the  night 
after  crossing  the  river,  and  kept  them  under  arms, 
in  expectation  of  an  attack. 

No  attack  being  made,  he  moved  up  the  river  the 
next  morning,  marching  most  of  the  men,  but  order- 
ing Jerry  Austill,  with  six  men,  to  paddle  up  in  two 
canoes  that  had  been  found.  This  Jerry  Austill — 
who  afterwards  became  a  merchant  in  Mobile  and  a 
state  senator — was  a  boy  only  nineteen  years  of  age 
at  the  time,  but  he  had  already  distinguished  him- 
self in  the  war  by  his  courage. 

At  a  point  called  Peggy  Bailey's  Bluff,  Dale,  who 

4 


58  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

was  marching  with  one  man  several  hundreds  of 
yards  ahead  of  his  men,  came  upon  a  party  of  Indians 
at  breakfast.  He  shot  one  of  them,  and  the  rest  ran 
away,  leaving  their  provisions  behind  them.  Secur- 
ing the  provisions,  Dale  marched  on  for  a  mile  or 
two,  but,  finding  no  further  trace  of  Indians,  he  con- 
cluded that  the  country  on  that  side  of  the  river  was 
now  pretty  clear  of  them,  and  so  he  set  to  work  to 
cross  to  the  other  side,  meaning  to  look  for  enemies 
there. 

The  river  at  that  point  is  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
wide,  and,  as  there  were  only  two  small  canoes  at 
hand,  the  work  of  taking  the  men  across  was  very 
slow.  When  all  were  over  except  Dale  and  about  a 
dozen  others,  the  little  remnant  of  the  force  was  sud- 
denly attacked. 

The  situation  was  a  very  dangerous  one.  With 
the  main  body  of  his  command  on  the  other  side  of 
the  river,  where  it  could  give  him  no  help,  Dale  had 
to  face  a  large  body  of  Indians  with  only  a  dozen  men, 
and,  as  only  one  canoe  remained  on  his  side  of  the 


The  Canoe  Fight.  59 

river,  it  was  impossible  for  the  whole  of  the  little 
party  to  escape  by  flight,  as  the  canoe  would  not  hold 
them  all. 

Concealing  his  men  in  the  bushes,  behind  trees, 
and  under  the  river-bank,  he  replied  to  the  fire  of  the 
Indians,  and  kept  them  at  bay.  But  it  was  certain 
that  this  could  not  last  long.  The  Indians  must  soon 
find  out  from  the  firing  how  small  the  number  of 
their  adversaries  was;  and  Dale  knew  that  as  soon 
as  the  discovery  was  made,  they  would  rush  upon 
him,  and  put  the  whole  party  to  death. 

He  called  to  the  men  on  the  other  side  of  the  river 
to  come  over  and  help  him,  but  they  were  panic- 
stricken,  probably  because  they  could  see,  as  Dale 
could  not,  how  large  a  body  of  Indians  was  pressing 
their  commander.  The  men  on  the  other  bank  did, 
indeed,  make  one  or  two  slight  attempts  to  cross,  but 
these  came  to  nothing,  and  the  little  party  on  the 
eastern  shore  seemed  doomed  to  destruction. 

Bad  as  matters  were  with  Dale,  they  soon  became 
worse.  An  immense  canoe,  more  than  thirty  feet 


60  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

loiig  and  four  feet  deep,  came  down  the  river,  bearing 
eleven  warriors,  who  undertook  to  land  and  attack 
Dale  in  the  rear.  This  compelled  the  party  to  fight 
in  two  directions  at  once.  Dale  and  his  companions 
kept  up  the  battle  in  front,  while  Jerry  Austill,  James 
Smith,  and  one  other  man  fought  the  warriors  in  the 
canoe  to  keep  them  from  landing.  One  of  the  eleven 
was  killed,  and  another  swam  ashore  and  succeeded 
in  joining  the  Indians  on  the  bank. 

Seeing  how  desperate  the  case  was,  Dale  resolved 
upon  a  desperate  remedy.  He  called  for  volunteers 
for  a  dangerous  piece  of  work,  and  was  at  once  joined 
by  Jerry  Austill,  James  Smith,  and  a  negro  man 
whose  name  was  Caesar.  With  these  men  he  leaped 
into  the  little  canoe,  and  paddled  towards  the  big 
Indian  boat,  meaning  to  fight  the  nine  Indians  who 
remained  in  it,  although  he  and  his  canoe  party  num- 
bered only  four  men  all  told. 

As  the  two  canoes  approached  each  other,  both 
parties  tried  to  fire,  but  their  gunpowder  was  wet, 
and  so  they  grappled  for  a  hand-to-hand  battle.  Jerry 


The  Canoe  Fight.  6 1 

Austill,  being  in  front,  received  the  first  attack.  No 
sooner  did  the  two  canoes  touch  than  an  Indian 
sprang  forward,  and  dealt  the  youth  a  terrible  blow 
with  a  war-club,  knocking  him  down,  and  making  a 
dent  in  his  skull  which  he  carried  through  life.  Once 
down,  he  would  have  been  killed  but  for  the  quick- 
ness of  Smith,  who,  seeing  the  danger  his  companion 
was  in,  raised  his  rifle.  With  a  single  blow  he 
knocked  over  the  Indian  with  whom  Austill  was 
struggling. 

Then  Austill  rose,  and  the  fierce  contest  went  on. 
Dale  and  his  men  rained  their  blows  upon  their  foes, 
and  received  blows  quite  as  lusty  in  return,  but  Cae- 
sar managed  the  boat  so  skilfully  that,  in  spite  of  the 
superior  numbers  of  the  Indians,  the  fight  was  not 
very  unequal.  He  held  the  little  boat  against  the 
big  one,  but  kept  it  at  the  end,  so  that  the  Indians 
in  the  other  end  of  the  big  canoe  could  not  reach 
Dale's  men. 

In  this  way  those  that  were  actually  fighting  Dale, 
Austill,  and  Smith  never  numbered  more  than  three 


62  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

or  four  at  any  one  time,  and  so  the  three  could  not 
be  borne  down  by  mere  force  of  numbers.  Dale 
stood  for  a  time  with  one  foot  in  each  boat;  then  he 
stepped  over  into  the  Indian  canoe,  giving  his  com- 
rades more  room,  and  crowding  the  Indians  towards 
the  end  of  their  boat. 

One  by  one  the  savages  fell,  until  only  one  was 
left  facing  Dale,  who  held  Caesar's  gun,  with  bayonet 
attached,  in  his  hand.  This  sole  survivor  was  Tar- 
cha-chee,  an  Indian  with  whom  Dale  had  hunted  and 
lived,  one  whom  he  regarded  as  a  friend,  and  whom 
he  now  wished  to  >spare.  But  the  savage  was  strong 
within  the  Indian's  breast,  and  he  refused  to  accept 
mercy  even  from  a  man  who  had  been  his  comrade 
and  friend.  Standing  erect  in  the  bow  of  the  canoe, 
he  shook  himself,  and  said,  in  the  Muscogee  tongue, 
"  Big  Sam,  you  are  a  man,  I  am  another ;  now  for  it." 

With  that  he  rushed  forward,  only  to  meet  death 
at  the  hands  of  the  friend  who  would  gladly  have 
spared  him. 

The  canoe  fight  was  ended,  but  Dale's  work  was 


The  Canoe  Fight.  65 

not  yet  done.  His  party  on  the  bank  were  every 
minute  more  closely  pressed,  and  if  they  were  to  be 
saved  it  must  be  done  quickly.  For  this  purpose  he 
and  his  companions  at  once  began  clearing  the  big 
canoe  of  its  load  of  dead  Indians.  Now  that  only 
the  white  men  were  there,  the  Indians  upon  the  bank 
directed  a  galling  fire  upon  the  canoe,  but  by  careen- 
ing it  to  one  side  Dale  made  a  sort  of  breastwork  of 
its  thick  gunwale,  and  thus  succeeded  in  clearing  it. 
When  this  was  done  he  went  ashore  and  quickly  car- 
ried off  the  party  there,  landing  all  of  them  in  safety 
on  the  other  side. 

The  hero  of  this  singular  battle  lived  until  the 
year  1841.  The  whole  story  of  his  life  is  a  romance 
of  hardship,  daring,  and  wonderful  achievement. 
When  he  died,  General  John  F.  H.  Claiborne,  who 
knew  him  intimately,  wrote  a  sketch  of  his  career  for 
a  Natchez  newspaper,  in  which  he  described  him  as 
follows : 

"  In  person  General  Dale  was  tall,  erect,  raw-boned, 
and  muscular.  In  many  respects,  physical  and  moral, 


66  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

he  resembled  his  antagonists  of  the  woods.     He  had 

O 

the  square  forehead,  the  high  cheek-bones,  the  com- 
pressed lips,  and,  in  fact,  the  physiognomy  of  an  In- 
dian, relieved,  however,  by  a  firm,  benevolent  Saxon 
eye.  Like  the  red  men,  too,  his  foot  fell  lightly  upon 
the  ground,  and  turned  neither  to  the  right  nor  left. 
He  was  habitually  taciturn,  his  face  grave,  he  spoke 
slowly  and  in  low  tones,  and  he  seldom  laughed.  I 
observed  of  him  what  I  have  often  noted  as  peculiar 
to  border  men  of  high  attributes :  he  entertained  the 
strongest  attachment  for  the  Indians,  extolled  their 
courage,  their  love  of  country,  and  many  of  their  do- 
mestic qualities ;  and  I  have  often  seen  the  wretched 
remnant  of  the  Choctaws  camped  round  his  planta- 
tion and  subsisting  on  his  crops." 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  after  the  war  ended,  when 
Weatherford  (Red  Eagle),  who  commanded  the  In- 
dians on  the  shore  in  this  battle  with  Dale,  was  about 
to  marry,  he  asked  Dale  to  act  as  his  best  man,  and 
the  two  who  had  fought  each  other  so  desperately 
stood  side  by  side,  as  devoted  friends,  at  the  altar. 


THE  BATTLE  OF  LAKE  BORGNE. 

HOW  THE  BRITISH   MADE  A   LANDING   UNDER  DIFFICULTIES. 

WHEN  the  British  made  up  their  minds,  near  the 
end  of  the  year  1814,  to  take  New  Orleans,  and  thus 
to  get  control  of  the  Mississippi  River,  there  seemed 
to  be  very  little  difficulty  in  their  way. 

So  far  as  anybody  on  either  side  could  see,  their 
only  trouble  was  likely  to  be  in  making  a  landing. 
If  they  could  once  get  their  splendid  army  on  shore 
anywhere  near  the  city,  there  was  very  little  to  pre- 
vent them  from  taking  the  town,  and  if  they  had 
taken  it,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  whole  history  of 
the  United  States  would  have  been  changed. 

They  did  make  a  landing,  but  they  did  not  take 
New  Orleans,  and  in  the  story  of  "The  Battle  in  the 
Dark  "  I  shall  tell  how  and  why  they  failed.  In  the 
present  story  I  want  to  tell  how  they  landed. 


68  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

The  expedition  consisted  of  a  large  fleet  bearing  a 
large  army.  At  first  the  intention  was  to  sail  up  the 
Mississippi  River,  but  General  Jackson  made  that 
impossible  by  building  strong  forts  on  the  stream, 
and  so  it  was  necessary  to  try  some  other  plan. 

It  happens  that  New  Orleans  has  two  entrances 
from  the  sea.  The  river  flows  in  front  of  the  city,  and 
by  that  route  it  is  about  a  hundred  miles  from  the 
city  to  the  sea ;  but  just  behind  the  town,  only  a  few 
miles  away,  lies  a  great  bay  called  Lake  Pontchar- 
train.  This  bay  is  connected  by  a  narrow  strait  with 
another  bay  called  Lake  Borgne,  which  is  connected, 
directly  with  the  sea. 

Lake  Borgne  is  very  shallow,  but  the  British  knew 
little  about  it.  They  only  knew  that  if  they  could 
land  anywhere  on  the  banks  of  Lake  Borgne  or  Lake 
Pontchartrain  they  would  be  within  an  easy  march 
of  New  Orleans. 

Accordingly,  the  fleet  bearing  the  British  army, 
instead  of  entering  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  and 
trying  to  get  to  New  Orleans  in  front,  sailed  in  by 


The  Battle  of  Lake  Borgne.  69 

the  back  way,  and  anchored  near  the  entrance  of 
Lake  Borgne. 

Here  the  British  had  their  first  sight  of  the  prep- 
arations made  to  resist  them.  Six  little  gun-boats, 
carrying  twenty-three  guns  in  all,  were  afloat  on  the 
lake  under  command  of  Lieutenant  Thomas  Ap 
Catesby  Jones.  These  gun-boats  were  mere  mosqui- 
toes in  comparison  with  the  great  British  men-of-war, 
and  when  they  made  their  appearance  in  the  track  of 
the  invadins;  fleet,  the  British  laughed  and  wondered 

O  O 

at  the  foolhardiness  of  the  American  commander  in 
sending  such  vessels  there. 

Lieutenant  Thomas  Ap  Catesby  Jones  knew  what 
he  was  about,  however,  as  the  British  soon  found  out. 
He  sailed  up  almost  within  cannon-shot  of  the  enemy's 
ships,  and  they,  of  course,  gave  chase  to  him.  Then 
he  nimbly  sailed  away,  with  the  fleet  after  him.  Very 
soon  a  large  man-of-war  ran  aground ;  then  another 
and  another  struck  the  bottom,  and  the  British  Ad- 
miral began  to  understand  the  trick.  It  was  evident 
that  Lake  Borgne  was  much  too  shallow  for  the  large 


yo  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

ships,  and  so  the  commander  called  a  halt,  and  trans- 
ferred the  troops  to  the  smaller  vessels  of  the  fleet. 

When  that  was  done  the  chase  was  begun  again 
by  the  smaller  ships,  and  for  a  time  with  every  pros- 
pect of  success ;  but  presently  even  these  ships  were 
hard  aground,  and  the  whole  British  fleet  which  had 
been  intended  to  carry  the  army  across  the  lake  was 
stuck  fast  in  the  mud  near  the  entrance,  and  thirty 
miles  from  the  point  at  which  the  landing  was  to  be 
made. 

The  British  commander  was  at  his  wits'  end.  It 
was  clear  that  the  ships  could  not  cross  the  lake,  and 
the  only  thing  to  be  done  was  to  transport  the  army 
across  little  by  little  in  the  ships'  boats,  and  make  a 
landing  in  that  way.  But  to  do  that  while  Lieuten- 
ant Jones  and  his  gun-boats  were  afloat  was  mani- 
festly impossible.  If  it  had  been  attempted,  the 
little  gun-boats,  which  could  sail  anywhere  on  the 
lake,  would  have  destroyed  the  British  army  by 
boat-loads. 

There  was  nothing  to  be  done  until  the  saucy  little 


The  Battle  of  Lake  Borgne.  71 

fleet  was  out  of  the  way,  and  to  put  it  out  of  the  way 
was  not  easy. 

Lieutenant  Jones  was  an  officer  very  much  given 
to  hard  fighting,  and  in  this  case  the  British  saw  that 
they  must  fight  him  at  a  disadvantage.  As  they 
could  not  get  to  him  in  their  ships,  they  must  make 
an  attack  in  open  boats,  which,  of  course,  was  a  very 
dangerous  thing  to  do,  as  the  American  gun-boats 
were  armed  with  cannon. 

The  British  commander  wanted  his  bravest  men 
for  such  work,  and  so  he  called  for  volunteers  to 
man  the  boats.  A  thousand  gallant  fellows  offered 
themselves,  and  were  placed  in  fifty  boats,  under  com- 
mand of  Captain  Lockyer.  Each  boat  was  armed 
with  a  carronade — a  kind  of  small  cannon — but  the 
men  well  knew  that  the  real  fighting  was  not  to  be 
done  with  carronades.  The  only  hope  of  success  lay 
in  a  sudden,  determined  attack.  The  only  way  to 
capture  the  American  gun-boats  was  to  row  up  to 
them  in  the  face  of  their  fire,  climb  over  their  sides, 
and  take  them  by  force  in  a  hand-to-hand  fight. 


72  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

When  the  flotilla  set  sail,  on  the  14th  of  December, 
Lieutenant  Jones  knew  what  their  mode  of  attack 
would  be  quite  as  well  as  Captain  Lockyer  did.  If 
he  let  them  attack  him  in  the  open  lake  he  knew  very 
well  that  the  British  could  overpower  him  and  cap- 
ture his  fleet ;  but  he  did  not  intend  to  be  attacked 
in  the  open  lake  if  he  could  help  it.  His  plan  was 
to  sail  slowly,  keeping  just  out  of  reach  of  the  row- 
boats,  and  gradually  to  draw  them  to  the  mouth  of  the 
strait  which  leads  into  Lake  Pontchartrain.  At  that 
point  there  was  a  well-armed  fort,  and  if  he  could 
anchor  his  gun-boats  across  the  narrow  channel,  he 
believed  he  could  destroy  the  British  flotilla  with  the 
aid  of  the  fort,  and  thus  beat  off  the  expedition  from 
New  Orleans. 

Unluckily,  while  the  fleet  was  yet  far  from  the 
mouth  of  the  strait  the  wind  failed  entirely,  and  the 
gun-boats  were  helpless.  They  could  not  sail  without 
wind,  and  they  must  receive  the  attack  right  where 
they  were. 

At  daylight  on  the  morning  of  December  15  the 


The  Battle  of  Lake  Borgne.  73 

British  flotilla  was  about  nine  miles  away,  but  was 
rapidly  drawing  nearer,  the  boats  being  propelled  by 
oars.  Lieutenant  Jones  called  the  commanders  of  his 
gun-boats  together,  gave  them  instructions,  and  in- 
formed them  of  his  purpose  to  make  as  obstinate  a 
fight  as  possible.  His  case  was  hopeless;  his  fleet 
would  be  captured,  but  by  fighting  obstinately  he 
could  at  least  gain  time  for  General  Jackson  at  New 
Orleans,  and  time  was  greatly  needed  there. 

Meanwhile  the  British  boats,  carrying  a  thousand 
men,  all  accustomed  to  desperate  fighting,  approached 
and  anchored  just  out  of  gunshot.  Captain  Lockyer 
wished  his  men  to  go  into  action  in  the  best  condition 
possible,  and  therefore  he  came  to  anchor  in  order  to 
rest  the  oarsmen,  and  to  give  the  men  time  for  breakfast. 

At  half-past  ten  o'clock  the  British  weighed  anchor, 
and,  forming  in  line,  began  the  advance.  As  soon  as 
they  came  within  range  the  American  gun-boats 
opened  fire,  but  with  little  effect  at  first.  Of  course 
the  British  could  not  reply  at  such  a  distance,  but 
being  under  fire,  their  chief  need  was  to  go  forward 


74  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

as  fast  and  come  to  close  quarters  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible. The  sailors  bent  to  their  oars,  and  the  boats 
flew  over  the  water.  Soon  the  men  at  the  bows  be- 
gan to  fire  the  carronades  in  reply  to  the  American 
cannon.  Then  as  the  boats  drew  nearer,  small  arms 
came  into  use,  and  the  battle  grew  fiercer  with  every 
moment.  The  British  boats  were  with  difficulty  kept 
in  line,  and  their  advance  grew  slower.  Oarsmen 
were  killed,  and  time  was  lost  in  putting  others  into 
their  places.  Still  the  line  was  preserved,  and  the 
battle  went  on,  the  attacking  boats  slowly  and  stead- 
ily advancing  all  the  time. 

Two  of  the  American  gun-boats  had  drifted  out  of 
place,  and  were  considerably  in  advance  of  the  rest. 
Seeing  this,  Captain  Lockyer  ordered  the  men  com- 
manding the  British  boats  to  surround  them,  and  a  few 
minutes  later  the  sailors  were  climbing  over  the  sides 
of  these  vessels.  Their  attack  was  stoutly  resisted. 
The  American  sailors  above  them  fired  volleys  into 
their  faces,  and  beat  them  back  with  handspikes. 
Scores  of  the  British  fell  back  into  the  water  dead  01 


The  Battle  of  Lake  Borgne.  75 

wounded,  while  their  comrades  pressed  forward  to  fill 
their  places.  There  were  so  many  of  them  that  in 
spite  of  all  the  Americans  could  do  to  beat  them  off 
they  swarmed  over  the  gunwales  and  gained  the 
decks.  Their  work  was  not  yet  done,  however.  The 
Americans  fiercely  contested  every  inch  of  their  ad- 
vance, and  the  two  parties  hewed  each  other  down 
with  cutlasses,  the  Americans  being  slowly  beaten 
back  by  superior  numbers,  but  still  obstinately  fight- 
ing until  they  could  fight  no  more. 

One  by  one  all  the  gunboats  were  taken  in  this 
way,  Lieutenant  Jones's  vessel  holding  out  longest, 
and  the  Lieutenant  himself  fighting  till  he  was 
stricken  down  with  a  severe  wound. 

Having  thus  cleared  Lake  Borgne,  the  British  were 
free  to  begin  the  work  of  landing.  It  was  a  terrible 
undertaking,  however — scarcely  less  so  than  the  fight 
itself.  The  whole  army  had  to  be  carried  thirty 
miles  in  open  boats  and  landed  in  a  swamp.  The 
men  were  drenched  with  rain,  and,  a  frost  coming  on, 

their  clothes  were  frozen  on  their  bodies.    There  was 

5 


76  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

no  fuel  to  be  had  on  the  island  where  they  made  theii 
first  landing,  and  to  their  sufferings  from  cold  was 
added  severe  suffering  from  hunger  before  supplies 
of  food  could  be  brought  to  them.  Some  of  the 
sailors  who  were  engaged  in  rowing  the  boats  were 
kept  at  work  for  four  days  and  nights  without  relief. 
The  landing  was  secured,  however,  and  the  British 
cared  little  for  the  sufferings  it  had  cost  them.  They 
believed  then  that  they  had  little  more  to  do  except 
to  march  twelve  miles  and  take  possession  of  the  city, 
with  its  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  bales  of  cot- 
ton and  its  ten  thousand  hogsheads  of  sugar.  How 
it  came  about  that  they  were  disappointed  is  made 
clear  in  the  next  story. 


THE  BATTLE  IN  THE  DAKK. 

HOW  GENERAL  JACKSON  RECEIVED  THE  BRITISH. 

the  British  succeeded  in  taking  Lieutenant 
Jones's  little  gun-boats  and  making  a  landing,  after 
the  manner  described  in  the  preceding  story,  they 
supposed  that  the  hardest  part  of  their  work  was 
done.  It  was  not  far  from  their  landing-place  to 
New  Orleans,  and  there  was  nothing  in  their  way. 
Their  army  numbered  nearly  twenty  thousand  men, 
and  the  men  were  the  best  soldiers  that  England 
had.  Many  of  them  were  Wellington's  veterans. 

It  seemed  certain  that  such  an  army  could  march 
into  New  Orleans  with  very  little  trouble  indeed,  and 
everybody  on  both  sides  thought  so — everybody,  that 
is  to  say,  but  General  Jackson.  He  meant  to  fight  that 
question  out,  and  as  the  Legislature  and  many  of  the 
people  in  the  city  would  do  nothing  to  help  him,  he 


78  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

put  the  town  under  martial  law,  and  worked  night 
and  day  to  get  together  something  like  an  army. 

On  the  23d  of  December,  1814,  the  British  arrived 
at  a  point  a  few  miles  below  the  city,  and  went  into 
camp  about  noon.  As  soon  as  Jackson  heard  of  their 
arrival  he  said  to  the  people  around  him,  "  Gentle- 
men, the  British  are  below :  we  must  fight  them  to- 
night." 

He  immediately  ordered  his  troops  forward.  He 
had  made  a  soldier  of  everybody  who  could  carry  a 
gun,  and  his  little  army  was  a  curiously  mixed  col- 
lection of  men.  There  were  a  few  regulars,  in  uni- 
form ;  there  were  some  Mississippi  troopers,  and  Cof- 
fee's Kentucky  and  Tennessee  hunters,  in  hunting- 
shirts  and  jeans  trousers ;  there  were  volunteers  of  all 
sorts  from  the  streets  of  New  Orleans — merchants, 
lawyers,  laborers,  clerks,  and  clergymen — armed  with 
shot-guns,  rifles,  and  old  muskets ;  there  were  some 
criminals  whom  Jackson  had  released  from  prison 
on  condition  that  they  would  fight;  there  was  a 
battalion  of  free  negroes,  who  were  good  soldiers; 


GENERAL  JACKSON   AT  NEW   ORLEANS. 


The  Battle  in  the  Dark.  81 

and,  finally,  there  were  about  twenty  Choctaw  In- 
dians. 

With  this  mixed  crowd  Jackson  had  to  fight  the 
very  best  troops  in  the  British  army.  Only  about 
half  of  his  men  had  ever  heard  a  bullet  whistle,  and 
less  than  half  of  them  were  drilled  and  disciplined ; 
but  they  were  brave  men  who  believed  in  their  gen- 
eral, and  they  were  about  to  fight  for  their  country 
as  brave  men  should.  When  all  were  counted — 
backwoodsmen,  regulars,  city  volunteers,  negroes,  In- 
dians, and  all — the  whole  army  numbered  only  2131 
men  !  But,  weak  as  this  force  was,  Jackson  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  fight  with  it.  He  knew  that 
the  British  were  too  strong  for  him,  but  he  knew  too 
that  every  day  would  make  them  stronger,  as  more 
and  more  of  their  troops  would  come  forward  each  day. 

The  British  camp  was  nine  miles  below  the  city, 
on  a  narrow  strip  of  land  between  the  river  and  a 
swamp.  Jackson  sent  a  gun-boat,  the  Carolina,  down 
the  river,  with  orders  to  anchor  in  front  of  the  camp 
and  pour  a  fire  of  grape-shot  into  it.  He  sent  Coffee 


82  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

across  to  the  swamp,  and  ordered  him  to  creep 
through  the  bushes,  and  thus  get  upon  the  right 
flank  of  the  British.  He  kept  the  rest  of  his  army 
under  his  own  command,  ready  to  advance  from  the 
front  upon  the  enemy's  position. 

But  no  attack  was  to  be  made  until  after  dark. 
The  army  was  kept  well  out  of  sight,  and  the  British 
had  no  suspicion  that  any  attack  was  thought  of. 
They  did  not  regard  Jackson's  men  as  soldiers  at  all, 
but  called  them  a  posse  comitatus  of  ragamuffins — 
that  is  to  say,  a  mob  of  ragged  citizens — and  the  most 
they  expected  such  a  mob  to  do  was  to  wait  some- 
where below  the  city  until  the  British  soldiers  should 
get  ready  to  drive  them  away  with  a  few  volleys. 

So  the  British  lighted  their  camp-fires,  stacked  their 
arms  for  the  night,  and  cooked  their  suppers.  They 
meant  to  stay  where  they  were  for  a  day  or  two 
until  the  rest  of  their  force  could  come  up,  and  then 
they  expected  to  march  into  the  town  and  make  them- 
selves at  home. 

Night  came  on,  and  it  was  exceedingly  dark.     At 


The  Battle  in  the  Dark.  83 

half-past  seven  o'clock  there  came  a  flash  and  a  roar. 
The  Carolina,  lying  in  the  river,  within  a  few  hun- 
dred yards  of  the  camp,  had  begun  to  pour  her 
broadsides  into  the  British  quarters.  Her  cannon 
vomited  fire,  and  sent  a  hail-storm  of  grape-shot  into 
the  camp,  while  the  marines  on  board  kept  up  a 
steady  fire  of  small-arms. 

The  British  were  completely  surprised,  but  they 
were  cool-headed  old  soldiers,  who  were  not  to  be 
scared  by  a  surprise.  They  quickly  formed  a  line  on 
the  bank,  and,  bringing  up  some  cannon,  gave  battle 
to  the  saucy  gun-boat. 

For  ten  minutes  this  fight  went  on  between  the 
Americans  on  the  river  and  the  British  on  shore; 
then  Jackson  ordered  his  troops  to  advance.  His 
columns  rushed  forward  and  fell  upon  the  enemy, 
again  surprising  them,  and  forcing  them  to  fight  on 
two  sides  at  once.  Coffee,  who  was  hidden  over  in 
the  swamp,  no  sooner  heard  the  roar  of  the  Carolines 
guns  than  he  gave  the  word  to  advance,  and,  rushing 
out  of  the  bushes,  his  rough  Tennesseeans  and  Ken- 


84  Strange  Stories  front  History. 

tuckians  attacked  still  another  side  of  the  enemy's 
position. 

Still  the  sturdy  British  held  their  ground,  and 
fought  like  the  brave  men  and  good  soldiers  that  they 
were.  It  was  too  dark  for  anybody  to  see  clearly 
what  was  going  on.  The  lines  on  both  sides  were 
soon  broken  up  into  independent  groups  of  soldiers, 
who  could  not  see  in  what  direction  they  were  march- 
ing, or  maintain  anything  like  a  regular  fight.  Regi- 
ments and  battalions  wandered  about  at  their  own 
discretion,  fighting  whatever  bodies  of  the  enemy 
they  met,  and  sometimes  getting  hopelessly  entangled 
with  each  other.  Never  was  there  so  complete  a 
jumble  on  a  battle-field.  Whenever  two  bodies  of 
troops  met,  they  had  to  call  out  to  each  other  to  find 
out  whether  they  were  friends  or  foes ;  then,  if  one 
body  proved  to  be  Americans  and  the  other  British, 
they  delivered  a  volley,  and  rushed  upon  each  other 
in  a  desperate  struggle  for  mastery. 

Sometimes  a  regiment  would  win  success  in  one 
direction,  and  just  as  its  enemy  on  that  side  was 


The  Battle  in  the  Dark.  85 

driven  back,  it  would  be  attacked  from  the  opposite 
quarter.  Coffee's  men  were  armed  with  squirrel 
rifles,  which,  of  course,  had  no  bayonets;  but  the  men 
had  their  long  hunting-knives,  and  with  no  better 
weapons  than  these  they  did  not  hesitate  to  make 
charge  after  charge  upon  the  lines  of  gleaming  bayo- 
nets. 

The  British  suffered  terribly  from  the  first,  but 
their  steadiness  was  never  lost  for  a  moment.  The 
mad  onset  of  the  Americans  broke  their  lines,  and  in 
the  darkness  it  was  impossible  to  form  them  again 
promptly ;  but  still  the  men  kept  up  the  fight, 
while  the  officers,  as  rapidly  as  they  could,  di- 
rected their  detached  columns  towards  protected  po- 
sitions. 

Retreating  slowly  and  in  as  good  order  as  they 
could,  the  British  got  beyond  the  range  of  the  Caro- 
lina's guns  by  nine  o'clock,  and,  finding  a  position 
where  a  bank  of  earth  served  for  a  breastwork,  they 
made  a  final  stand  there.  It  was  impossible  to  drive 
them  from  such  a  position,  and  so,  little  by  little,  the 


86  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

Americans  withdrew,  and  at  ten  o'clock  the  Battle  in 
the  Dark  was  at  an  end. 

Now  let  us  see  what  Jackson  had  gained  or  lost  by 
this  hasty  attack.  The  British  were  still  in  a  posi- 
tion to  threaten  New  Orleans.  They  had  not  been 
driven  away,  and  the  rest  of  their  large  army,  which 
had  not  yet  come  up,  was  hurrying  forward  to  help 
them.  They  had  lost  a  great  many  more  men  than 
Jackson  had,  but  they  could  spare  men  better  than 
he  could,  and  they  were  not  whipped  by  any  means. 
Still,  the  attack  was  equal  to  a  victory  for  the  Amer- 
icans. It  is  almost  certain  that  if  Jackson  had  waited 
another  day  before  fighting  he  would  have  lost  New 
Orleans,  and  the  whole  Southwest  would  have  been 
overrun. 

But,  by  making  this  night  attack,  he  showed  the 
British  that  he  could  and  would  fight ;  and  they,  find- 
ing what  kind  of  a  defence  he  meant  to  make,  made 
up  their  minds  to  move  slowly  and  cautiously.  They 
waited  for  the  rest  of  their  force  to  come  up,  and 
while  they  were  waiting  and  getting  ready  Jackson 


The  Battle  in  the  Dark.  87 

had  more  than  two  weeks'  time  in  which  to  collect 
troops  from  the  country  north  of  him,  to  get  arms 
and  ammunition,  and  to  throw  up  strong  fortifica- 
tions. When  the  British  made  their  grand  attack  on 
the  8th  of  January,  1815,  they  found  Jackson  ready 
for  them.  His  army  was  increased,  his  men  were 
full  of  confidence,  and,  best  of  all,  he  had  a  line  of 
strong  earth-works  to  fight  behind.  It  is  commonly 
said  that  his  fortifications  were  made  of  cotton-bales, 
but  that  is  an  error.  When  he  first  began  to  fortify, 
he  used  some  cotton-bales,  and  some  sugar,  which,  it 
was  thought,  would  do  instead  of  sand ;  but  in  some 
of  the  early  skirmishes  it  was  found  that  the  sugar 
was  useless,  because  it  would  not  stop  cannon-balls ; 
while  the  cotton  was  worse,  because  it  took  fire,  and 
nearly  suffocated  the  men  behind  it  with  smoke.  The 
cotton  and  sugar  were  at  once  thrown  aside,  and  the 
battle  of  New  Orleans  was  fought  behind  earth-works. 
In  that  battle  the  British  were  so  badly  worsted  that 
they  gave  up  all  idea  of  taking  New  Orleans,  which, 
a  mouth  before,  they  had  believed  it  would  be  so  easy 
to  capture. 


THE  TROUBLESOME   BURGHERS. 

PHILIP  VAN  ARTEVELDE  was  a  Dutchman.  His 
father,  Jacob,  had  been  Governor  of  Ghent,  and  had 
made  himself  a  great  name  by  leading  a  revolt 
against  the  Count  of  Flanders,  and  driving  that  ty- 
rant out  of  the  country  on  one  occasion. 

Philip  was  a  quiet  man,  who  attended  to  his  own 
affairs  and  took  no  part  in  public  business;  but  in 
the  year  1381  the  good  people  of  Ghent  found  them- 
selves in  a  very  great  difficulty.  Their  city  was  sub- 
ject to  the  Count  of  Flanders,  who  oppressed  them 
in  every  way.  He  and  his  nobles  thought  nothing 
of  the  common  people,  but  taxed  them  heavily  and 
interfered  with  their  business. 

The  city  of  Bruges  was  the  rival  of  Ghent,  and  in 
those  days  rivals  in  trade  were  enemies.  The  Bruges 
people  were  not  satisfied  with  trying  to  make  more 


The  Troublesome  Burghers.  89 

money  and  get  more  business  than  Ghent  could,  but 
they  wanted  Ghent  destroyed,  and  so  they  supported 
Count  Louis  in  all  that  he  did  to  injure  their  neigh- 
boring city. 

Having  this  quarrel  on  their  hands,  the  Ghent 
people  did  not  know  what  to  do.  Count  Louis  was 
too  strong  for  them,  and  they  were  very  much  afraid 
he  would  destroy  their  town  and  put  the  people  to 
death. 

A  public  meeting  was  held,  and  remembering 
how  well  old  Jacob  van  Artevelde  had  served  them 
against  the  father  of  Count  Louis,  they  made  his  son 
Philip  their  captain,  and  told  him  he  must  manage 
this  quarrel  for  them. 

Philip  undertook  this  duty,  and  tried  to  settle  the 
trouble  in  some  peaceable  way ;  but  the  Count  was 
angry,  and  would  not  listen  to  anything  that  Van 
Artevelde  proposed.  He  said  the  Ghent  people 
were  rebels,  and  must  submit  without  any  condi- 
tions at  all,  and  this  the  sturdy  Ghent  burghers 
refused  to  do, 


90  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

Count  Louis  would  not  march  against  the  town 
and  give  the  people  a  fair  chance  to  fight  the  matter 
out.  He  preferred  to  starve  them,  and  for  that  pur- 
pose he  put  soldiers  on  all  the  roads  leading  towards 
Ghent,  and  refused  to  allow  any  provisions  to  be 
taken  to  the  city. 

The  people  soon  ate  up  nearly  all  the  food  they 
had,  and  when  the  spring  of  1382  came  they  were 
starving.  Something  must  be  done  at  once,  and 
Philip  van  Artevelde  decided  that  it  was  of  no  use  to 
resist  any  longer.  He  took  twelve  deputies  with 
him,  and  went  to  beg  the  Count  for  mercy.  He 
offered  to  submit  to  any  terms  the  Count  might  pro- 
pose, if  he  would  only  promise  not  to  put  any  of  the 
people  to  death.  Philip  even  offered  himself  as  a 
victim,  agreeing  that  the  Count  should  banish  him 
from  the  country  as  a  punishment,  if  he  would  spare 
the  people  of  the  town.  But  the  haughty  Count 
would  promise  nothing.  He  said  that  all  the  people 
of  Ghent  from  fifteen  to  sixty  years  old  must  march 
half-way  to  Bruges  bareheaded,  with  no  clothes  on 


The  Troublesome  Biirghers.  9 1 

but  their  shirts,  and  each  with  a  rope  around  his 
neck,  and  then  he  would  decide  how  many  of  them 
he  would  put  to  death  and  how  many  he  would 
spare. 

The  Count  thought  the  poor  Ghent  people  would 
have  to  submit  to  this,  and  he  meant  to  put  them  all 
to  death  when  they  should  thus  come  out  without 
arms  to  surrender.  He  therefore  called  on  his  vassals 
to  meet  him  in  Bruges  at  Easter,  and  to  go  out  with 
him  to  "  destroy  these  troublesome  burghers." 

But  the  "  troublesome  burghers,"  as  we  shall  see 
presently,  were  not  the  kind  of  men  to  walk  out  bare- 
headed, with  ropes  around  their  necks,  and  submit  to 
destruction. 

Philip  van  Artevelde  returned  sadly  to  Ghent,  on 
the  29th  of  April,  and  told  the  people  what  the 
Count  had  said.  Then  the  gallant  old  soldier  Peter 
van  den  Bossche  exclaimed : 

"In  a  few  days  the  town  of  Ghent  shall  be  the 
most  honored  or  the  most  humbled  town  in  Christen- 
dom." 


92  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

Van  Artevelde  called  the  burghers  together,  and 
told  them  what  the  situation  was.  There  were  30,000 
people  in  Ghent,  and  there  was  no  food  to  be  had  for 
them.  There  was  no  hope  that  the  Count  would  offer 
any  better  terms,  or  that  anybody  would  come  to  their 
assistance.  They  must  decide  quickly  what  they 
would  do,  and  Philip  said  there  were  three  courses 
open  to  them.  First,  if  they  chose,  they  could  wall 
up  the  gates  of  the  town  and  die  of  starvation. 
Secondly,  they  could  accept  the  Count's  terms,  march 
out  with  the  ropes  around  their  necks,  and  take  what- 
ever punishment  the  Count  might  put  upon  them. 
If  they  should  decide  to  do  that,  Philip  said  he 
would  offer  himself  to  the  Count  to  be  hanged  first. 
Thirdly,  they  could  get  together  5000  of  their  best 
men,  march  to  Bruges,  and  fight  the  quarrel  out. 

The  answer  of  the  people  was  that  Philip  must 
decide  for  them,  and  he  at  once  said,  "  Then  we  will 
fight." 

The  5000  men  were  got  together,  and  on  the  1st  of 
May  they  marched  out  of  the  town  to  win  or  lose  the 


The  Troublesome  Burghers.  93 

desperate  battle.  The  priests  of  the  city  stood  at  the 
gates  as  the  men  marched  out,  and  prayed  for  bless- 
ings upon  them.  The  old  men,  the  women,  and  the 
children  cried  out,  "If  you  lose  the  battle  you  need 
not  return  to  Ghent,  for  you  will  find  your  families 
dead  in  their  homes." 

The  only  food  there  was  for  these  5000  men  was 
carried  in  five  little  carts,  while  on  another  cart  two 
casks  of  wine  were  taken. 

The  next  day  Van  Artevelde  placed  his  little  army 
in  line  on  the  common  of  Beverhoutsveld,  at  Oedelem, 
near  Bruges.  There  was  a  marsh  in  front  of  them, 
and  Van  Artevelde  protected  their  flank  by  a  fortifi- 
cation consisting  of  the  carts  and  some  stakes  driven 
into  the  ground.  He  then  sent  a  messenger  to  the 
Count,  begging  him  to  pardon  the  people  of  Ghent, 
and,  having  done  this,  he  ordered  his  men  to  go  to 
sleep  for  the  night. 

At  daybreak  the  next  morning  the  little  army  was 
aroused  to  make  final  preparations  for  the  desperate 
work  before  them.  The  priests  exhorted  the  men  to 


94  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

fight  to  the  death,  showing  them  how  useless  it  would 
be  to  surrender  or  to  run  away,  as  they  were  sure  to 
be  put  to  death  at  any  rate.  Their  only  hope  for 
life  was  in  victory,  and  if  they  could  not  win  that,  it 
would  be  better  to  die  fighting  like  men  than  to  sur- 
render and  be  put  to  death  like  dogs. 

After  these  exhortations  were  given,  seven  gray 
friars  said  mass  and  gave  the  sacrament  to  all  the 
soldiers.  Then  the  five  cart-loads  of  provisions  and 
the  two  casks  of  wine  were  divided  among  the  men, 
for  their  last  breakfast.  When  that  meal  was  eaten, 
the  soldiers  of  Ghent  had  not  an  ounce  of  food  left 
anywhere. 

Meanwhile  the  Count  called  his  men  together  in 
Bruges,  and  got  them  ready  for  battle ;  but  the  people 
of  Bruges  were  so  sure  of  easily  destroying  the  little 
Ghent  army  that  they  would  not  wait  for  orders, 
but  marched  out  shouting  and  singing  and  making 
merry. 

As  their  column  marched  along  the  road  in  this 
noisy  fashion,  the  "  troublesome  burghers  "  of  Ghent 


The  Troublesome  Burghers.  97 

suddenly     sprang     upon     them,    crying,    "  Ghent! 
Ghent!" 

The  charge  was  so  sudden  and  so  fierce  that  the 
Bruges  people  gave  way,  and  fled  in  a  panic  towards 
the  town,  with  Van  Artevelde's  men  at  their  heels  in 
hot  pursuit.  The  Count's  regular  troops  tried  to 
make  a  stand,  but  the  burghers  of  Ghent  came  upon 
them  so  furiously  that  they  too  became  panic-stricken 
and  fled.  The  Count  himself  ran  with  all  his  might, 
and  as  soon  as  he  entered  the  city  he  ordered  the 
gates  to  be  shut.  He  was  so  anxious  to  save  himself 
from  the  fury  of  Van  Artevelde's  soldiers  that  he 
wanted  to  close  the  gates  at  once  and  leave  those  of 
his  own  people  who  were  still  outside  to  their  fate. 
But  it  was  already  too  late.  Van  Artevelde's  column 
had  followed  the  retreating  crowd  so  fast  that  it  had 
already  pushed  its  head  into  the  town,  and  there  was 
no  driving  it  back.  The  five  thousand  "troublesome 
burghers,"  with  their  swords  in  their  hands,  and  still 
crying  "  Ghent !"  swarmed  into  Bruges,  and  quickly 
took  possession  of  the  town.  The  Count's  army  was 


98  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

utterly  routed  and  scattered,  and  the  Count  himself 
would  have  been  taken  prisoner  if  one  of  the  Ghent 
burghers  had  not  hidden  him  and  helped  him  to 
escape  from  the  city. 

Van  Artevelde's  soldiers,  who  had  eaten  the  last 
of  their  food  that  morning  in  the  belief  that  they 
would  never  eat  another  meal  on  earth,  supped  that 
night  on  the  richest  dishes  that  Bruges  could  sup- 
ply; and  now  that  the  Count  was  overthrown,  great 
wagon  trains  of  provisions  poured  into  poor,  starving 
Ghent. 

There  was  a  great  golden  dragon  on  the  belfry  of 
Bruges,  of  which  the  Bruges  people  were  very  proud. 
That  dragon  had  once  stood  on  the  Church  of  St. 
Sophia  in  Constantinople,  and  the  Emperor  Baldwin 
had  sent  it  as  a  present  to  Bruges.  In  token  of  their 
victory  Van  Artevelde's  "  troublesome  burghers"  took 
down  the  golden  dragon  and  carried  it  to  Ghent. 


THE  DEFENCE  OF  EOCHELLE. 

HOW  THE  CITY  OF  REFUGE  FOUGHT  FOR  LIBERTY. 

IN  the  old  times,  when  people  were  in  the  habit 
of  fighting  each  other  about  their  religion,  the  little 
French  seaport  Rochelle  was  called  "  the  city  of  ref- 
uge." The  Huguenots,  or  French  Protestants,  held 
the  place,  and  when  the  armies  of  the  French  king 
tried  to  take  it,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  they  were  beaten  off  and  so  badly  used  in 
the  fight  that  the  king  was  glad  to  make  terms  with 
the  townspeople. 

An  agreement  was  therefore  made  that  they  should 
have  their  own  religion,  and  manage  their  own  affairs; 
and  to  make  sure  of  this  the  king  gave  Rochelle  so 
many  special  rights  that  it  became  almost  a  free  city. 
After  that,  whenever  a  Protestant  in  any  part  of  France 
found  that  he  could  not  live  peaceably  in  his  own 


ioo  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

home,  he  went  to  Rochelle,  and  that  is  the  Way  the 
place  came  to  be  called  the  city  of  refuge. 

For  a  good  many  years  the  people  of  Rochelle  went 
on  living  quietly.  They  had  a  fine  harbor  of  their 
own,  their  trade  was  good,  and  they  were  allowed  to 
manage  their  own  affairs.  At  last  the  new  King  of 
France  made  up  his  mind  that  he  would  not  have  two 
religions  in  his  country,  but  would  make  everybody 
believe  as  he  did.  This  troubled  the  people  of  Ro- 
chelle, but  the  king  sent  them  word  that  he  only 
meant  to  make  them  change  their  religion  by  showing 
them  that  his  was  better,  and  that  he  did  not  intend 
to  trouble  them  in  any  way. 

In  those  days  promises  of  that  kind  did  not  count 
for  much;  but  the  king's  prime -minister,  Cardinal 
Richelieu,  who  really  managed  everything,  knew  very 
well  that  Rochelle  could  give  a  great  deal  of  trouble 
if  it  chose,  and  so,  perhaps,  he  really  would  have  let 
the  town  alone  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  meddling 
of  the  English  prime-minister,  Buckingham. 

This  Buckingham,  with  an  English  fleet  and  army, 


The  Defence  of  Rochelle.  101 

sailed  into  the  harbor  of  Rochelle  in  the  middle  of 
July,  1627,  and  undertook  to  help  the  people  against 
the  French  king.  If  Buckingham  had  been  either  a 
soldier  or  a  sailor,  he  might  have  made  himself  mas- 
ter of  the  French  king's  forts  near  Rochelle  at  once ; 
but,  although  he  had  command  of  a  fleet  and  an  army, 
he  really  knew  nothing  about  the  business  of  a  com- 
mander, and  he  blundered  so  badly  that  the  generals 
of  the  French  king  got  fresh  troops  and  provisions 
into  the  forts,  and  were  able  to  hold  them  in  spite  of 
all  that  the  English  could  do. 

Seeing  how  matters  stood,  Richelieu  at  once  sent  an 
army  to  surround  Rochelle,  and  at  daylight  on  the 
10th  of  August  the  people  found  a  strong  force  in 
front  of  the  town.  Rochelle  had  not  made  up  its 
mind  to  join  the  English,  and  the  magistrates  sent 
word  to  the  French  general  that  they  wanted  peace. 
They  said  they  were  loyal  to  the  French  king,  and 
even  offered  to  help  drive  the  English  away,  if  their 
king  would  promise  not  to  break  the  treaty  that  had 
been  made  with  them  many  years  before. 


IO2  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

It  was  too  late  to  settle  the  matter  in  that  way, 
however.  The  French  general  meant  to  make  the 
town  surrender,  and  so,  while  the  English  were  fight- 
ing to  get  control  of  the  island  of  Rhe,  at  some  dis- 
tance from  the  town,  he  began  to  build  works  around 
Rochelle.  His  plan  was  to  shut  the  people  up  in  the 
city  and  cut  off  their  supplies  of  food ;  and  when  the 
Rochelle  folk  saw  what  he  was  doing,  they  opened 
fire  on  his  men. 

The  war  was  now  begun,  and  the  Huguenots  made 
terms  with  Buckingham,  hoping,  with  his  help,  to  win 
in  the  struggle.  Buckingham  promised  to  help  them, 
and  he  did  try  to  do  so  in  his  blundering  way ;  but 
he  did  them  more  harm  than  good,  for  when  he 
found  that  he  could  not  take  the  forts  he  sailed  away, 
taking  with  him  three  hundred  tons  of  grain,  which 
he  ought  to  have  sent  into  the  town. 

It  was  November  when  the  English  left,  and  Ro- 
chelle was  in  a  very  bad  situation.  Richelieu  set  to 
work  to  shut  the  town  in  and  seal  it  up.  He  built 
strong  works  all  around  the  land  side,  and  then,  with 


The  Defence  of  Rochelle.  105 

great  labor,  brought  earth  and  stones  and  built  a 
mole,  or  strip  of  land,  nearly  all  the  way  across  the 
mouth  of  the  harbor,  so  that  no  boats  could  pass  in 
or  out. 

The  situation  was  a  terrible  one,  but  the  people  of 
Rochelle  were  brave,  and  had  no  thought  of  flinching. 
They  chose  the  mayor,  Guiton,  for  their  commander, 
and  when  he  accepted  the  office  he  laid  his  dagger  on 
the  table,  saying :  "  I  will  thrust  that  dagger  into  the 
heart  of  the  first  man  who  speaks  of  giving  up  the 
town."  He  then  went  to  work  to  defend  the  place. 
He  strengthened  the  works,  and  made  soldiers  of  all 
the  men  in  the  city,  and  all  the  boys,  too,  for  that 
matter.  Everybody  who  could  handle  a  weapon  of 
any  kind  had  to  take  his  place  in  the  ranks.  England 
had  promised  to  send  help,  and  the  only  question, 
Guiton  thought,  was  whether  or  not  he  could  hold 
out  till  the  help  should  come ;  so  he  laid  his  plans  to 
resist  as  long  as  possible. 

The  French  in  great  numbers  stonned  the  defences 
time  after  time;  but  the  brave  Rochellese  always 


io6  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

drove  them  back  with  great  loss.  It  was  clear  from 
the  first  that  Guiton  would  not  give  way,  and  that 
no  column,  however  strong,  could  force  the  city 
gates.  But  there  was  an  enemy  inside  the  town 
which  was  harder  to  fight  than  the  one  outside. 
There  was  famine  in  Rochelle !  The  cattle  were  eat- 
en up,  and  the  horses  went  next.  Then  everything 
that  could  be  turned  into  food  was  carefully  used  and 
made  to  go  as  far  as  it  would.  Guiton  stopped  every 
kind  of  waste ;  but  day  by  day  the  food  supply  grew 
smaller,  and  the  people  grew  weaker  from  hunger. 
Starvation  was  doing  its  work.  Every  day  the  list 
of  deaths  grew  longer,  and  when  people  met  in  the 
streets  they  stared  at  each  other  with  lean,  white,  hun- 
gry faces.  wrondering  who  would  be  the  next  to  go. 

Still  these  heroic  people  had  no  thought  of  giving 
up.  They  were  fighting  for  liberty,  and  they  loved 
that  more  than  life.  The  French  were  daily  charging 
their  works,  but  could  not  move  the  stubborn,  starv- 
ing Rochellese.  • 

The  winter  dragged  on  slowly.     Spring  came,  and 


The  Defence  of  Rochelle .  107 

yet  no  help  had  come  from  England.  In  March  the 
French,  thinking  that  the  people  must  be  worn  out, 
hurled  their  heaviest  columns  against  the  lines;  but, 
do  what  they  would,  they  could  not  break  through 
anywhere,  and  had  to  go  back  to  their  works,  and 
wait  for  famine  to  conquer  a  people  who  could  not 
be  conquered  by  arms. 

One  morning  in  May  an  English  fleet  was  seen 
outside  the  mole.  The  news  ran  through  the  town 
like  wildfire.  Help  was  at  hand,  and  the  poor  starv- 
ing people  were  wild  with  joy.  Men  ran  through 
the  streets  shouting  and  singing  songs  of  thanksgiv- 
ing. They  had  borne  terrible  sufferings,  but  now  help 
was  coming,  and  they  were  sure  that  their  heroic  en- 
durance would  not  be  thrown  away.  Thousands  of 
their  comrades  had  fallen  fighting,  and  thousands  of 
their  women  and  children  had  starved  to  death ;  but 
what  was  that  if,  after  all,  Rochelle  was  not  to  lose 
her  liberties  ? 

Alas !  their  hope  was  a  vain  one,  and  their  joy  soon 
turned  to  sorrow.  The  English  fleet  did  nothing.  It 


io8  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

hardly  tried  to  do  anything ;  but  after  lying  within 
sight  of  the  town  for  a  while  it  sailed  away  again  and 
left  Koch  el  le  to  its  fate. 

Richelieu  was  sure  that  Guiton  would  surrender 
now,  and  so  he  sent  a  messenger  to  say  that  he  would 
spare  the  lives  of  all  the  people  if  the  town  were  giv- 
en up  within  three  days.  But  the  gallant  Guiton 
was  not  ready  even  yet  to  give  up  the  struggle. 
"  Tell  Cardinal  Richelieu,"  he  said  to  the  messenger, 
"that  we  are  his  very  obedient  servants;"  and  that 
was  all  the  answer  he  had  to  make. 

When  the  summer  came  some  food  was  grown  in 
the  city  gardens,  but  this  went  a  very  little  way 
among  so  many  people,  and  the  famine  had  now 
grown  frightful.  The  people  gathered  all  the  shell- 
fish they  could  find  at  low  tide.  They  ate  the  leaves 
off  the  trees,  and  even  the  grass  of  the  gardens  and 
lawns  was  used  for  food.  Everything  that  could  in 
any  way  help  to  support  life  was  consumed ;  every- 
thing that  could  be  boiled  into  the  thinnest  soup  was 
turned  to  account ;  everything  that  could  be  chewed 


The  Defence  of  Rochelle.  109 

for  its  juice  was  used  to  quiet  the  pains  of  fierce  hun- 
ger; but  all  was  not  enough.  Men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren died  by  thousands.  Every  morning  when  the 
new  guard  went  to  take  the  place  of  the  old  one 
many  of  the  sentinels  were  found  dead  at  their  posts 
from  starvation. 

Still  the  heroic  Guiton  kept  up  the  fight,  and  no- 
body dared  say  anything  to  him  about  giving  up. 
He  still  hoped  for  help  from  England,  and  meant  to 
hold  out  until  it  should  come,  cost  what  it  might.  In 
order  that  the  soldiers  might  have  a  little  more  to 
eat,  and  live  and  fight  a  little  longer,  he  turned  all 
the  old  people  and  those  who  were  too  weak  to  fight 
out  of  the  town.  The  French  would  not  let  these 
poor  wretches  pass  their  lines,  but  made  an  attack  on 
them,  and  drove  them  back  towards  Rochelle.  But 
Guiton  would  not  open  the  city  gates  to  them.  He 
said  they  would  starve  to  death  if  he  let  them  into 
Rochelle,  and  they  might  as  well  die  outside  as  inside 
the  gates. 

At  last  news  came  that  the  English  had  made  a. 


no  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

treaty  with  the  French,  and  so  there  was  no  longer 
any  hope  of  help  for  Rochelle,  and  truly  the  place 
could  hold  out  no  longer.  The  famine  was  at  its 
worst.  Out  of  about  thirty  thousand  people  only 
five  thousand  were  left  alive,  and  they  were  starving; 
of  six  hundred  Englishmen  who  had  stayed  to  help  the 
Rochellese  all  were  dead  but  sixty-two.  Corpses  lay 
thick  in  the  streets,  for  the  people  were  too  weak,  from 
fasting,  even  to  bury  their  dead.  The  end  had  come. 
On  the  30th  of  October,  1628,  after  nearly  fifteen 
months  of  heroic  effort  and  frightful  suffering,  Ro- 
chelle surrendered. 

Richelieu  at  once  sent  food  into  the  town,  and 
treated  the  people  very  kindly ;  but  he  took  away  all 
the  old  rights  and  privileges  of  the  city.  He  pulled 
down  all  the  earthworks  used  by  the  defenders  of  the 
place,  and  gave  orders  that  nobody  should  build 
even  a  garden  fence  anywhere  near  the  town.  He 
made  a  law  that  no  Protestant  who  was  not  already 
a  citizen  of  Rochelle  should  go  thither  to  live,  and  that 
the  "  city  of  refuge  "  should  never  again  receive  any 
stranger  without  a  permit  from  the  king. 


THE  SAD  STORY  OF  A  BOY  KING. 

LONDON  took  a  holiday  on  the  16th  of  July,  1377o 
There  were  processions  of  merry-makers  in  the  streets, 
and  the  windows  were  crowded  with  gayly  dressed 
men,  women,  and  children.  The  great  lords,  glitter- 
ing in  armor,  and  mounted  upon  splendid  steel-clad 
horses,  marched  through  the  town.  The  bishops  and 
clergymen  in  gorgeous  robes  made  a  more  solemn, 
but  not  less  attractive  show.  The  trade-guilds  were 
out  in  their  best  clothing,  bearing  the  tools  of  their 
trades  instead  of  arms.  Clowns  in  motley,  merry- 
makers of  all  kinds,  great  city  dignitaries,  lords  and 
commons  —  everybody,  in  short,  made  a  mad  and 
merry  holiday ;  and  at  night  the  houses  were  illumi- 
nated, and  great  bonfires  were  lighted  in  the  streets. 

All  England  was  wild  with  joy ;  but  the  happiest 
person  in  the  land  was  Richard  Plantagenet,  a  boy 


ii2  Strange  Stories  from  History, 

eleven  years  of  age.  Indeed,  it  was  for  this  boy's 
sake  and  in  his  honor  that  all  this  feasting  and  merry- 
making went  on,  for  on  that  day  young  Richard  was 
crowned  King  of  England ;  and  in  those  times  a 
king  of  England  was  a  much  more  important  person 
than  now,  because  the  people  had  not  then  learned 
to  govern  themselves,  and  the  king  had  powers  which 
Englishmen  would  not  allow  any  man  to  have  in  our 
time. 

Richard  was  too  young  to  govern  wisely,  and  so  a 
council  was  appointed  to  help  him  until  he  should 
grow  up;  but  in  the  meantime  he  was  a  real  king, 
boy  as  he  was,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  he  was  the 
happiest  boy  in  England  on  that  July  day,  when  all 
London  took  a  holiday  in  his  honor. 

But  if  he  had  known  what  this  crowning  was  to 
lead  to,  young  Richard  might  have  been  very  glad  to 
change  places  with  any  baker's  or  butcher's  boy  in 
London.  The  boy  king  had  some  uncles  and  cousins 
who  were  very  great  people,  and  who  gave  him  no 
little  trouble  after  a  while.  He  had  wars  on  his 


The  Sad  Story  of  a  Boy  King.  1 1  * 

hands,  too,  and  needed  a  great  deal  more  money  than 
the  people  were  willing  to  give  him;  and  so,  when 
he  orew  older  and  took  the  o-overnment  into  his  own 

o  o 

hands,  he  found  troubles  all  around  him.  The  Irish 
people  rebelled  frequently ;  the  Scotch  were  hostile ; 
there  was  trouble  with  Spain  because  Richard's  uncle 
wanted  to  become  king  of  that  country,  and  there 
was  a  standing  war  with  France. 

But  this  was  not  all.  In  order  to  carry  on  these 
wars  the  king  was  obliged  to  have  money ;  and  when 
he  ordered  taxes  to  be  collected  the  common  people, 
led  by  Wat  Tyler,  rose  in  rebellion.  They  marched 
into  London,  seized  the  Tower,  and  put  to  death  the 
treasurer  of  the  kingdom,  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, and  many  other  persons  high  in  the  govern- 
ment. Tyler  was  so  insolent  one  day  that  the  Lord 
Mayor  of  London  killed  him  ;  but  the  boy  king,  who 
was  only  sixteen  years  old,  seeing  that  the  rebels 
were  too  strong  for  him,  put  himself  at  their  head, 
and  marched  with  them  out  of  the  city ;  and  so  the 
king,  against  whom  the  rebellion  was  made,  became 

7 


114  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

.the  leader  of  the  rebels.  As  soon  as  matters  grew 
quiet,  however,  he  broke  all  the  promises  he  had 
made,  and  punished  the  chief  rebels  very  harshly. 

Not  long  after  this  one  of  the  king's  uncles  made  him- 
self master  of  the  kingdom  by  force,  and  it  was  several 
years  before  Richard  could  put  him  out  of  power. 

But  the  greatest  of  all  Richard's  troubles  were  yet 
to  come.  His  cousin,  Henry  Bolingbroke,  the  son  of 
old  John  of  Gaunt,  had  misbehaved,  and  Richard  had 
sent  him  out  of  England,  not  to  return  for  ten  years. 
But  while  Richard  was  in  Ireland  putting  down  a 
rebellion  there,  Henry  came  back  to  England,  raised 
an  army,  and  was  joined  by  many  of  the  most  pow- 
erful men  in  the  kingdom.  When  Richard  came 
back  from  Ireland  Henry  made  him  a  prisoner,  and 
not  long  afterwards  the  great  men  made  up  their 
minds  to  set  up  Henry  as  the  king  instead  of  Rich- 
ard. They  made  Richard  sign  a  paper  giving  up  his 
right  to  the  crown,  and  then,  to  make  the  matter 
sure,  Parliament  passed  a  law  that  Richard  should 
be  king  no  longer. 


The  Sad  Story  of  a  Boy  King.  1 1 5 

Richard  was  only  thirty-three  years  old  when  all 
this  was  done,  but  after  so  many  troubles  he  might 
well  have  been  glad  to  give  up  his  kingship,  if  that 
had  been  the  end  of  the  matter.  But  a  king  who 
has  been  set  aside  is  always  a  dangerous  man  to  have 
in  the  kingdom,  and  it  would  not  do  to  let  Richard 
go  free.  He  might  gather  his  friends  around  him 
and  give  trouble.  So  it  was  decided  that  the  unfort- 
unate man  should  be  shut  up  in  a  prison  for  the  rest 
of  his  life. 

But  even  this  was  not  the  worst  of  the  matter. 
Richard  had  a  wife — Queen  Isabella — whom  he  loved 
very  dearly,  and  if  the  two  could  have  gone  away  to- 
gether into  some  quiet  place  to  live,  they  might  still 
have  been  happy  in  spite  of  being  under  guard  all 
the  time.  But  the  new  king  would  not  have  it  so. 
He  gave  orders  that  Richard  should  be  shut  up  close- 
ly in  a  prison,  and  that  Isabella  should  go  back  to 
France,  where  Richard  had  married  her. 

This  was  a  terrible  thing  for  the  young  man  and 
his  younger  wife,  who  might  have  had  a  long  life  of 


n  6  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

happiness  still  before  them  if  Richard  had  never  been 
a  king.  But  Richard  had  been  King  of  England, 
and  so  he  had  to  give  up  both  his  freedom  and  his 
wife. 

In  his  play  of  "  King  Richard  the  Second  "  Shake- 
speare makes  a  very  touching  scene  of  their  parting. 
In  the  play  their  farewell  takes  place  in  the  street,  as 
shown  in  our  picture.  Isabella,  anxious  to  see  her 
husband  once  more  before  they  part  forever,  waits  at 
a  point  which  she  knows  he  must  pass  on  his  way  to 
prison.  There  they  meet  and  talk  together  for  the 
last  time  on  earth.  The  words  which  Shakespeare 
puts  into  their  mouths  are  terribly  sad,  but  very 
beautiful.  You  will  find  the  scene  at  the  beginning 
of  Act  V.  of  the  play.  The  picture  shows  the  two  at 
the  moment  when  Richard  moves  away  to  his  prison, 
leaving  Isabella  to  mourn  for  him  in  a  nunnery  for 
the  rest  of  her  life. 

It  is  not  certainly  known  what  became  of  Richard 
after  he  was  taken  to  prison.  It  is  believed  that  he 
was  murdered  there — perhaps  starved  to  death — but 


The  Sad  Story  of  a  Boy  King.  1 1 9 

there  is  a  story  that  he  got  away  and  lived  in  Scot- 
laud,  dying  there  in  1419.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  that 
the  story  is  true,  however,  and  the  common  belief  has 
always  been  that  he  died  or  was  killed  in  Pontefract 
Castle,  where  he  was  imprisoned. 

However  that  may  be,  Richard's  life  was  a  terri- 
bly unhappy  one,  and  all  his  sorrows  grew  out  of  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  king.  If  he  could  have  looked  for- 
ward on  that  July  day  when  the  people  were  making 
merry  in  his  honor,  and  could  have  known  all  that 
was  to  happen  to  him,  instead  of  being  the  happiest 
boy  in  England  on  his  coronation  day,  he  would  have 
been  the  most  wretched. 


TWO  OBSCURE   HEROES. 

HOW  THE  PARTISAN  WARFARE   IN  THE  CAROLINAS  WAS  BEGUN. 

WHEN  the  British  marched  up  from  Savannah  and 
took  Charleston,  in  the  spring  of  1780,  they  thought 
the  Revolution  was  at  an  end  in  the  Southern  States, 
and  it  really  seemed  so.  Even  the  patriots  thought 
it  was  useless  to  resist  any  longer,  and  so  when  the 
British  ordered  all  the  people  to  come  together  at 
different  places  and  enrol  themselves  as  British  sub- 
jects, most  of  them  were  ready  to  do  it,  simply 
because  they  thought  they  could  not  help  them- 
selves. 

Only  a  few  daring  men  here  and  there  were  bold 
enough  to  think  of  refusing,  and  but  for  them  the 
British  could  have  set  up  the  royal  power  again  in 
South  Carolina,  and  then  they  would  have  been  free 
to  take  their  whole  force  against  the  patriots  farther 


Two  Obscure  Heroes.  121 

north.  The  fate  of  the  whole  country  depended,  to 
a  large  extent,  upon  the  courage  of  the  few  men  who 
would  not  give  up  even  at  such  a  time,  but  kept  up 
the  fight  against  all  odds.  These  brave  men  forced 
the  British  to  keep  an  army  in  the  South  which  they 
needed  farther  north. 

The  credit  of  beginning  this  kind  of  partisan  war- 
fare belongs  chiefly  to  two  or  three  plain  men,  who 
did  it  simply  because  they  loved  their  country  more 
than  their  ease. 

The  man  who  first  began  it  was  Justice  Gaston — a 
white-haired  patriot  who  lived  on  a  little  stream 
called  Fishing  Creek,  near  Rocky  Mount.  He  was 
eighty  years  of  age,  and  might  well  have  thought  him- 
self too  old  to  care  about  war  matters ;  but  he  was  a 
brave  man  and  a  patriot,  and  the  people  who  lived 
near  him  were  in  the  habit  of  taking  his  advice  and 
doing  as  he  did. 

When  the  news  came  that  Tarleton  had  killed  a 
band  of  patriots  under  Colonel  Buford  in  cold  blood 
Justice  Gaston  called  his  nine  sons  and  many  of  his 


122  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

nephews  around  him.  Joining  hands,  these  young 
men  promised  each  other  that  they  never  would  take 
the  British  oath,  and  never  would  give  up  the  cause, 
come  what  might. 

Soon  afterwards  a  British  force  came  to  the  neigh- 
borhood, and  all  the  people  were  ordered  to  meet  at 
Rocky  Mount  to  enrol  their  names  and  take  the  oath. 
One  of  the  British  officers  went  to  see  Justice  Gaston, 
arid  tried  to  persuade  him  that  it  was  folly  to  refuse. 
He  knew  that  if  Gaston  advised  the  people  to  give 

N 

up,  there  would  be  no  trouble ;  but  the  white-haired 
patriot  told  him  to  his  face  that  he  would  never  take 
the  oath  himself  or  advise  anybody  else  to  do  so. 

As  soon  as  the  officer  left  the  old  man  sent  for  his 
friends,  and  about  thirty  brave  fellows  met  at  his 
house  that  night,  with  their  rifles  in  their  hands. 
They  knew  there  would  be  a  strong  force  of  British 
and  Tories  at  Rocky  Mount  the  next  day,  but,  in  spite 
of  the  odds  against  them,  they  made  up  their  minds 
to  attack  the  place,  and  when  the  time  came  they 
did  so.  Creeping  through  the  woods,  they  suddenly 


Two  Obscure  Heroes.  123 

came  upon  the  crowd,  and  after  a  sharp  fight  sent  the 
British  flying  helter-skelter  in  every  direction.  This 
stopped  the  work  of  enrolling  the  people  as  British 
subjects,  and  it  did  more  than  that.  It  showed  the 
patriots  through  the  whole  country  that  they  could 
still  give  the  British  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  and  after 
this  affair  many  of  the  men  who  had  thought  of  giving 
up  rubbed  up  their  rifles  instead,  and  formed  little 
bands  of  fighting  men  to  keep  the  war  going. 

Another  man  who  did  much  to  stir  up  partisan 
warfare  was  the  Rev.  William  Martin,  an  old  and  pi- 
ous preacher  in  the  Scotch-Irish  settlements.  These 
Scotch-Irish  were  very  religious  people,  and  their 
preacher  was  their  leader  in  all  things.  One  Sunday, 
after  the  news  had  come  to  the  settlement  that  Bu- 
ford's  men  had  been  killed  by  the  British  in  cold 
blood,  the  eloquent  old  man  went  into  his  pulpit  and 
preached  about  the  duty  of  fighting.  In  the  after- 
noon he  preached  again,  and  even  when  the  service 
was  over  he  went  on  in  the  open  air,  still  preaching 
to  the  people  how  they  should  fight  for  their  country, 


124  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

until  all  the  men  in  the  settlement  were,  full  of  fight- 
ing spirit.  The  women  told  the  men  to  go  and  do 
their  duty,  and  that  they  would  take  care  of  the 
crops. 

These  little  bands  of  patriots  were  too  small  to 
fight  regular  battles,  or  even  to  hold  strong  posts. 
They  had  to  hide  in  the  woods  and  swamps,  and 
only  came  out  when  they  saw  a  chance  to  strike  a 
blow.  Then  the  blow  fell  like  lightning,  and  the 
men  who  dealt  it  quickly  hid  themselves  again. 

They  had  signs  by  which  they  told  each  other 
what  they  were  going  to  do.  A  twig  bent  down,  a 
few  stones  strung  along  a  path,  or  any  other  of  a  hun- 
dred small  signs,  served  to  tell  every  patriot  when 
and  where  to  meet  his  friends.  A  man  riding  about, 
breaking  a  twig  here  and  there,  or  making  some  other 
sign  of  the  kind,  could  call  together  a  large  force  at 
a  chosen  spot  within  a  few  hours.  The  men  brought 
out  in  this  way  would  fall  suddenly  upon  some  stray 
British  force  that  was  off  its  guard,  and  utterly  de- 
stroy it.  The  British  would  at  once  send  a  strong 


Two  Obscure  Heroes.  127 

body  of  troops  to  punish  the  daring  patriots,  but  the 
redcoat  leader  would  look  in  vain  for  anybody  to  pun- 
ish. The  patriots  could  scatter  and  hide  as  quickly 
as  they  could  come  together. 

Finding  that  they  could  not  destroy  these  patriot 
companies,  the  British  and  Tories  took  their  revenge 
on  women  and  children.  They  burned  the  houses  of 
the  patriots,  carried  off  their  crops,  and  killed  their 
cattle,  so  as  to  starve  their  families ;  but  the  women 
were  as  brave  as  the  men,  and  from  first  to  last  not 
one  of  them  ever  wished  her  husband  or  son  to  give 
up  the  fight. 

If  the  patriots  could  not  conquer  the  British,  they 
at  least  kept  them  in  a  hornets'  nest.  If  they  could 
not  drive  them  out  of  South  Carolina,  they  could 
keep  them  there,  which  was  nearly  as  good  a  thing 
to  do,  because  every  soldier  that  Cornwallis  had  to 
keep  in  the  South  would  have  been  sent  to  some 
other  part  of  the  country  to  fight  the  Americans  if 
the  Carolinians  had  let  the  British  alone. 

In  this  way  small  bands  of  resolute  men  kept  Corn- 


128  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

wallis  busy,  and  held  the  state  for  the  American 
cause,  until  General  Greene  went  south  and  took 
command.  Greene  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
American  generals,  and  after  a  long  campaign  he 
drove  the  British  out  of  the  state.  But  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  partisans  the  South  would  have  been 
lost  long  before  he  could  be  spared  to  go  there ;  and 
if  the  partisans  had  not  kept  a  British  army  busy 
there,  it  might  have  gone  very  hard  with  the  Ameri- 
cans in  the  rest  of  the  country. 

When  we  rejoice  in  the  freedom  of  our  country  we 
ought  not  to  forget  how  much  we  owe  the  partisans, 
and  especially  such  men  as  Justice  Gaston  and  the 
Rev.  William  Martin,  who  first  set  the  partisans 
at  their  work.  It  would  have  been  much  easier  and 
pleasanter  for  them  to  remain  quiet  under  British 
rule;  and  they  had  nothing  to  gain  for  themselves, 
but  everything  to  lose,  by  the  course  they  took. 
Gaston  knew  that  his  home  would  be  burned  for 
what  he  did,  and  the  eloquent  old  Scotch  preacher 
knew  that  he  would  be  put  into  a  prison-Den  for 


Two  Obscure  Heroes.  129 

preaching  war  sermons  to  his  people ;  but  tbey  were 
not  men  to  flinch.  They  cared  more  for  their  country 
than  for  themselves,  and  it  was  precisely  that  kind 
of  men  throughout  the  land,  from  New  England  to 
Georgia,  who  won  liberty  for  us  by  seven  years  of 
hard  fighting  and  terrible  suffering. 


THE  CHARGE  OF  THE  HOUNDS. 

AN   INCIDENT   OF   THE   CREEK   WAR. 

A  TERRIBLE  bit  of  news  was  carried  from  mouth  to 
mouth  through  the  region  that  is  now  Alabama  at 
the  beginning  of  September,  1813.  The  country  was 
at  that  time  in  the  midst  of  the  second  war  with 
Great  Britain,  and  for  a  long  time  British  agents  had 
been  trying  to  persuade  the  Creeks — a  powerful  na- 
tion of  half-civilized  but  very  warlike  Indians  who 
lived  in  Alabama — to  join  in  the  war  and  destroy  the 
white  settlements  in  the  Southwest. 

For  some  time  the  Creeks  hesitated,  and  it  was  un- 
certain what  they  would  do.  But  during  the  sum- 
mer of  1813  they  broke  out  in  hostility,  and  on  the 
30th  of  August  their  great  leader,  Weatherford,  or 
the  Red  Eagle,  as  they  called  him,  stormed  Fort 
Minis,  the  strongest  fort  in  the  Southwest.  He  took 


The  Charge  of  the  Hounds.  131 

the  fort  by  surprise,  with  a  thousand  warriors  behind 
him,  and,  after  five  hours  of  terrible  fighting,  de- 
stroyed it,  killing  about  five  hundred  men,  women, 
and  children. 

This  was  the  news  that  startled  the  settlers  in  the 
region  where  the  Alabama  and  Tombigbee  rivers  come 
together.  It  was  certain,  after  such  a  massacre  as  that, 
that  the  Indians  meant  to  destroy  the  settlements, 
and  kill  all  the  white  people  without  mercy. 

In  order  to  protect  themselves  and  their  families 
the  settlers  built  rude  forts  by  setting  pieces  of  tim- 
ber endwise  in  the  ground,  and  the  people  hurried  to 
these  places  for  safety.  Leaving  their  homes  to  be 
burned,  their  crops  to  be  destroyed,  and  their  cattle 
to  be  killed  or  carried  off  by  the  Indians,  the  settlers 
hastily  got  together  what  food  they  could,  and  took 
their  families  into  the  nearest  forts. 

One  of  the  smallest  of  these  stockade  forts  was 
called  Sinquefield.  It  stood  in  what  is  now  Clarke 
County,  Alabama,  and,  as  that  region  was  very  thinly 
settled,  there  were  not  enough  men  to  make  a  strong 


132  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

force  for  the  defence  of  the  fort.  But  the  brave  farm- 
ers and  hunters  thought  they  could  hold  the  place, 
and  so  they  took  their  families  thither  as  quickly  as 
they  could. 

Two  families,  numbering  seventeen  persons,  found  it 
was  not  easy  to  go  to  Siuquefield  on  the  2d  of  Septem- 
ber, and  so,  as  they  were  pretty  sure  that  there  were  no 
Indians  in  their  neighborhood  as  yet,  they  made  up 
their  minds  to  stay  one  more  night  at  a  house  a  few 
miles  from  the  fort.  That  night  they  were  attacked, 
and  all  but  five  of  them  were  killed.  Those  who  got 
away  carried  the  news  of  what  had  happened  to  the 
fort,  and  a  party  was  sent  out  to  bring  in  the  bodies. 

The  next  day  all  the  people  in  Fort  Sinquefield 
went  out  to  bury  their  dead  friends  in  a  valley  at 
some  little  distance  from  the  fort,  and,  strange  as  it 
seems,  they  took  no  arms  with  them.  Believing  that 
there  were  no  Indians  near  the  place,  they  left  the 
gates  of  the  fortress  open,  and  went  out  in  a  body 
without  their  guns. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  a  large  body  of  In.- 


The  Charge  of  the  Hounds.  133 

dians  not  only  very  near  them,  but  actually  looking 
at  them  all  the  time.  The  celebrated  Prophet  Fran- 
cis was  in  command,  and  in  his  sly  way  he  had  crept 
as  near  the  fort  as  possible  to  look  for  a  good  chance 
to  attack  it.  Making  his  men  lie  down  and  crawl 
like  snakes,  he  had  reached  a  point  only  a  few  hun- 
dred yards  from  the  stockade  without  alarming  the 
people,  and  now,  while  they  stood  around  the  graves 
of  their  friends  without  arms  to  defend  themselves 
with,  a  host  of  their  savage  enemies  lay  looking  at 
them  from  the  grass  and  bushes  on  the  hill. 

As  soon  as  he  saw  that  the  right  moment  had 
come,  Francis  sprang  up  with  a  savage  war-cry,  and 
at  the  head  of  his  warriors  made  a  dash  at  the  gates. 
He  had  seen  that  the  men  outside  were  unarmed,  and 
his  plan  was  to  get  to  the  gates  before  they  could 
reach  them,  and  thus  get  all  the  people  of  the  place 
at  his  mercy  in  an  open  field  and  without  arms  to 
fight  with. 

The  fort  people  were  quick  to  see  what  his  purpose 

was,  and  the  men   hurried  forward   with   all  their 

8 


134  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

might,  hoping  to  reach  the  fort  before  the  savages 
could  get  there.  By  running  at  the  top  of  their 
speed  they  did  this,  and  closed  the  gates  in  time  to 
keep  the  Indians  out.  But,  to  their  horror,  they  then 
saw  that  their  wives  and  children  were  shut  out  too. 
Unable  to  run  so  fast  as  the  men  had  done,  the  wom- 
en and  children  had  fallen  behind,  and  now  the  In- 
dians were  between  them  and  the  gates ! 

Seeing  that  he  had  missed  his  chance  of  getting 
possession  of  the  fort,  Francis  turned  upon  the  women 
and  children  with  savage  delight  in  the  thought  of 
butchering  these  helpless  creatures  in  the  sight  of 
their  husbands,  fathers,  and  brothers. 

It  was  a  moment  of  terror.  There  were  not  half 
enough  white  men  in  the  fort  to  master  so  large  a 
force  of  Indians,  and  if  there  had  been  it  was  easy  to 
see  that  by  the  time  they  could  get  their  rifles  and 
go  to  the  rescue  it  would  be  too  late. 

At  that  moment  the  hero  of  this  bit  of  history 
came  upon  the  scene.  This  was  a  young  man  named 
Isaac  Haden.  He  was  a  notable  huntsman,  who  kept 


The  Charge  of  the  Hounds.  135 

a  famous  pack  of  hounds — fierce  brutes,  thoroughly 
trained  to  run  down  and  seize  any  live  thing  that 
their  master  chose  to  chase.  This  young  man  had 
been  out  in  search  of  stray  cattle,  and  just  at  the  mo- 
ment when  matters  were  at  their  worst  he  rode  up  to 
the  fort,  followed  by  his  sixty  dogs. 

Isaac  Haden  had  a  cool  head  and  a  very  daring 
spirit.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  in  a  situation 
at  a  glance,  deciding  quickly  what  was  to  be  done, 
and  then  doing  it  at  any  risk  that  might  be  neces- 
sary. As  soon  as  he  saw  how  the  women  and  chil- 
dren were  placed,  he  cried  out  to  his  dogs,  and,  at  the 
head  of  the  bellowing  pack,  charged  upon  the  flank 
of  the  Indians.  The  dogs  did  their  work  with  a  spirit 
equal  to  their  master's.  For  each  to  seize  a  red  war- 
rior and  drag  him  to  earth  was  the  work  of  a  mo- 
ment, and  the  whole  body  of  savages  was  soon  in 
confusion.  For  a  time  they  had  all  they  could  do  to 
defend  themselves  against  the  unlooked-for  assault  of 
the  fierce  animals,  and  before  they  could  beat  off  the 
dogs  the  men  of  the  fort  came  out  and  joined  in  the 


136  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

attack,  so  that  the  women  and  children  had  time  to 
make  their  way  inside  the  gates,  only  one  of  them,  a 
Mrs.  Phillips,  having  been  killed. 

The  men,  of  course,  had  to  follow  the  women  close- 
ly, as  they  were  much  too  weak  in  numbers  to  risk  a 
battle  outside.  If  they  had  done  so  the  Indians 
would  have  overcome  them  quickly,  and  then  the 
fort  and  everybody  in  it  would  have  been  at  their 
mercy,  so  the  settlers  hurried  into  the  fort  as  soon  as 
the  women  were  safe. 

But  the  hero  who  had  saved  the  people  by  his 
quickness  and  courage  was  left  outside,  and  not  only 
so,  but  the  savages  were  between  him  and  the  fort. 
He  had  charged  entirely  through  the  war  party,  and 
was  now  beyond  their  line,  alone,  and  with  no  chance 
of  help  from  any  quarter. 

His  hope  of  saving  himself  was  very  small  indeed; 
but  he  had  saved  all  those  helpless  women  and  little 
children,  and  he  was  a  brave  enough  fellow  to  die  will- 
ingly for  such  a  purpose  as  that  if  he  must.  But  brave 
men  do  not  give  up  easily,  and  young  Haden  did  not 
mean  to  die  without  a  last  effort  to  save  himself. 


The  Charge  of  the  Hounds.  1 39 

Blowing  a  loud  blast  upon  iiis  hunting -horn  to 
call  his  remaining  dogs  around  him,  he  drew  his  pis- 
tols— one  in  each  hand — and  plunged  spurs  into  his 
horse's  flanks.  In  spite  of  the  numbers  against  him 
he  broke  through  the  mass  of  savages,  but  the  gal- 
lant horse  that  bore  him  fell  dead  as  he  cleared  the 
Indian  ranks.  Haden  had  fired  both  his  pistols,  and 
had  no  time  to  load  them  again.  He  was  practically 
unarmed  now,  and  the  distance  he  still  had  to  go  be- 
fore reaching  the  gates  was  considerable.  His  chance 
of  escape  seemed  smaller  than  ever,  but  he  quickly 
sprang  from  the  saddle,  and  ran  with  all  his  might, 
hotly  pursued,  and  under  a  terrific  fire  from  the  rifles 
of  the  savages.  The  gate  was  held  a  little  way  open 
for  him  to  pass,  and  when  he  entered  the  fort  his 
nearest  pursuers  were  so  close  at  his  heels  that  there 
was  barely  time  for  the  men  to  shut  the  gate  in  their 
faces. 

Strangely  enough,  the  brave  young  fellow  was  not 
hurt  in  any  way.  Five  bullets  had  passed  through 
his  clothes,  but  his  skin  was  not  broken. 


THE  STORY  OF  A  WINTER  CAMPAIGN. 

NEARLY  all  the  countries  in  Europe  were  making 
war  upon  France  in  1795.  The  French  people  had 
set  up  a  republic,  and  all  the  kingdoms  round  about 
were  trying  to  make  them  submit  to  a  king  again. 
This  had  been  going  on  for  several  years,  and  some- 
times it  looked  as  though  the  French  would  be  beat- 
en, in  spite  of  their  brave  struggles  to  keep  their  en- 
emies back  and  manage  their  own  affairs  in  their  own 
way. 

At  one  time  everything  went  against  the  French. 
Their  armies  were  worn  out  with  fighting,  their  sup- 
ply of  guns  had  run  short,  they  had  no  powder,  and 
their  money  matters  were  in  so  bad  a  state  that  it 
seemed  hardly  possible  for  France  to  hold  out  any 
longer.  In  the  meantime  England,  Austria,  Spain, 
Holland,  Piedmont,  and  Prussia,  besides  many  of  the 


The  Story  of  a  Winter  Campaign.  141 

small  German  states,  had  joined  together  to  fight 
France,  and  their  armies  were  on  every  side  of  her. 

A  country  in  such  a  state  as  that,  with  so  many 
powerful  enemies  on  every  side,  might  well  have  giv- 
en up ;  but  the  French  are  a  brave  people,  and  they 
were  fighting  for  their  liberties.  Instead  of  giving 
up  in  despair,  they  set  to  work  with  all  their  might 
to  carry  on  the  war. 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  raise  new  armies, 
and  so  they  called  for  men,  and  the  men  came  forward 
in  great  numbers  from  every  part  of  the  country.  In 
a  little  while  they  had  more  men  to  make  soldiers  of 
than  had  ever  before  been  brought  together  in  France. 
But  this  was  only  a  beginning.  The  men  were  not 
yet  trained  soldiers,  and  even  if  they  had  been,  they 
had  no  guns  and  no  powder;  no  clothing  was  to  be 
had,  and  there  was  very  little  food  for  them  to  eat. 
Still  the  French  did  not  despair. 

Knowing  that  there  would  not  be  time  enough 
to  train  the  new  men,  they  put  some  of  their  old 
soldiers  in  each  regiment  of  new  ones,  so  that  the 


142  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

new  men  might  learn  from  the  veterans  how  to  march 
and  how  to  fight. 

In  the  meantime  they  had  set  up  armories,  and 
were  making  guns  as  fast  as  they  could.  Their  great- 
est trouble  was  about  powder.  They  had  chemists 
who  knew  how  to  make  it,  but  they  had  no  nitre  to 
make  it  of,  and  did  not  know  at  first  how  to  get  any. 
At  last  one  of  their  chemists  said  that  there  was 
some  nitre — from  a  few  ounces  to  a  pound  or  two— 
in  the  earth  of  every  cellar  floor ;  and  that  if  all  the 
nitre  in  all  the  cellar  floors  of  France  could  be  col- 
lected, it  would  be  enough  to  make  plenty  of  powder. 

But  how  to  get  this  nitre  was  a  question.  The 
cellar  floors  must  be  dug  up,  the  earth  must  be 
washed,  and  the  water  must  be  carefully  passed 
through  a  course  of  chemical  treatment  in  order  to 
get  the  nitre,  free  from  earth  and  from  all  other 
things  with  which  it  was  mixed.  It  would  take 
many  days  for  a  chemist  to  extract  the  nitre  from  the 
earth  of  a  single  cellar,  and  then  he  would  get  only  a 
pound  or  two  of  it  at  most. 


The  Story  of  a  Winter  Campaign.  143 

It  did  not  seem  likely  that  much  could  be  done  in 
this  way,  but  all  the  people  were  anxious  to  help,  and 
so  the  cry  went  up  from  every  part  of  the  country, 
"  Send  us  chemists  to  teach  us  how,  and  we  will  do 
the  work  and  get  the  nitre  ourselves."  This  was 
quickly  done.  All  the  chemists  were  set  at  work 
teaching  the  people  how  to  get  a  little  nitre  out  of  a 
great  deal  of  earth,  and  then  every  family  went  to 
work.  In  a  little  while  the  nitre  began  to  come  in 
to  the  powder-factories.  Each  family  sent  its  little 
parcel  of  the  precious  salt  as  a  free  gift  to  the  coun- 
try. Some  of  them  were  so  proud  and  glad  of  the 
chance  to  help  that  they  dressed  their  little  packages 
of  nitre  in  ribbons  of  the  national  colors,  and  wrote 
patriotic  words  upon  them.  Each  little  parcel  held 
only  a  few  ounces,  or  at  most  a  pound  or  two,  of  the 
white  salt ;  but  the  parcels  came  in  by  tens  of  thou- 
sands, and  in  a  few  weeks  there  were  hundreds  of 
tons  of  nitre  at  the  powder-mills. 

As  soon  as  there  was  powder  enough  the  new  ar- 
mies began  to  press  their  enemies,  and,  during  the 


144  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

summer  and  fall  of  1794,  they  steadily  drove  them 
back.  When  they  met  their  foes  in  battle  they  near- 
ly  always  forced  them  to  give  way.  They  charged 
upon  forts  and  took  them  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet; 
cities  and  towns  everywhere  fell  into  their  hands,  and 
by  the  time  that  winter  set  in  they  were  so  used  to 
winning  battles  that  nothing  seemed  too  hard  for 
them  to  undertake. 

But  the  French  soldiers  were  in  a  very  bad  condi- 
tion to  stand  the  cold  of  winter.  .  One  great  army, 
under  General  Pichegru,  which  had  driven  the  Eng- 
lish and  Dutch  far  into  the  Netherlands,  was  really 
almost  naked.  The  shoes  of  the  soldiers  were  worn 
out,  and  so  they  had  to  wrap  their  feet  in  wisps  of 
straw  to  keep  them  from  freezing.  Many  of  the  men 
had  not  clothing  enough  to  cover  their  nakedness, 
and,  for  decency's  sake,  had  to  plait  straw  into  mats 
which  they  wore  around  their  shoulders  like  blank- 
ets. They  had  no  tents  to  sleep  in,  but,  nearly  naked 
as  they  were,  had  to  lie  down  in  the  snow  or  on  the 
hard  frozen  ground,  and  sleep  as  well  as  they  could 
in  the  bitter  winter  weather. 


The  Story  of  a  Winter  Campaign.  145 

There  never  was  an  army  more  in  need  of  a  good 
rest  in  winter-quarters,  and  as  two  great  rivers  lay  in 
front  of  them,  it  seemed  impossible  to  do  anything 
more  until  spring.  The  English  and  Dutch  were  al- 
ready safely  housed  for  the  winter,  feeling  perfectly 
sure  that  the  French  could  not  cross  the  rivers  or 
march  in  any  direction  until  the  beginning  of  the 
next  summer. 

The  French  generals,  therefore,  put  their  men  into 
the  best  quarters  they  could  get  for  them,  and  the 
poor,  half-naked,  barefooted  soldiers  were  glad  to 
think  that  their  work  for  that  year  was  done. 

Day  by  day  the  weather  grew  colder.  The  ground 
was  frozen  hard,  and  ice  began  running  in  the  rivers. 
After  a  little  while  the  floating  ice  became  so  thick 
that  the  rivers  were  choked  with  it.  When  Christ- 
mas came  the  stream  nearest  the  French  was  frozen 
over,  and  three  days  later  the  ice  was  so  hard  that 
the  surface  of  the  river  was  as  firm  as  the  solid 
ground. 

Then  came  an  order  from  General  Pichegru  to 


146  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

shoulder  arms  and  march.  In  the  bitterest  weather 
of  that  terrible  winter  the  barefooted,  half-clad  French 
soldiers  left  their  huts,  and  marched  against  their  foes. 
Crossing  the  first  river  on  the  ice,  they  fell  upon  the 
surprised  Dutch  and  utterly  routed  them.  About 
the  same  time  they  made  a  dash  at  the  strong  forti- 
fied posts  along  the  river,  and  captured  them. 

The  French  were  now  masters  of  the  large  island 
that  lay  between  the  two  rivers,  for  they  are  really 
only  two  branches  of  one  river,  and  the  land  between 
them  is  an  island.  But  the  ice  in  the  farther  stream 
was  not  yet  hard  enough  to  bear  the  weight  of  can- 
non, so  Pichegru  had  to  stay  where  he  was  for  a  time. 
Both  sides  now  watched  the  weather,  the  French  hop- 
ing for  still  harder  frosts,  while  their  enemies  prayed 
for  a  thaw. 

The  cold  weather  continued,  and  day  by  day  the 
ice  became  firmer.  On  the  8th  of  January,  1795, 
Pichegru  began  to  cross,  and  on  the  10th  his  whole 
army  had  passed  the  stream,  while  his  enemies  were 
rapidly  retreating.  He  pushed  forward  into  the 


The  Story  of  a  Winter  Campaign.  147 

country,  sending  his  columns  in  different  directions  to 
press  the  enemy  at  every  point.  The  barefooted,  half- 
naked  French  soldiers  were  full  of  spirit,  and  in  spite 
of  frost  and  snow  and  rough  frozen  roads  they  marched 
steadily  and  rapidly.  City  after  city  fell  before  them, 
and  on  the  20th  of  January  they  marched  into  Am- 
sterdam itself,  and  were  complete  conquerors. 

Hungry  and  half-frozen  as  they  were,  it  would  not 
have  been  strange  if  these  poor  soldiers  had  rushed 
into  the  warm  houses  of  the  city  and  helped  them- 
selves to  food  and  clothing.  But  they  did  nothing 
of  the  kind.  They  stacked  their  arms  in  the  streets 
and  public  squares,  and  quietly  waited  in  the  snow, 
patiently  bearing  the  bitter  cold  of  the  wind  for  sev- 
eral hours,  while  the  magistrates  were  getting  houses 
and  food  and  clothing  ready  for  them. 

This  whole  campaign  was  wonderful,  and  on  al- 
most every  day  some  strange  thing  happened;  but, 
perhaps,  the  strangest  of  all  the  events  in  this  winter 
war  was  that  which  is  shown  in  the  picture.  Piche- 
gru,  learning  that  there  was  a  fleet  of  the  enemy's  ves- 


148  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

sels  lying  at  anchor  near  the  island  of  Texel,  sent  a 
column  of  cavalry,  with  some  cannon,  in  that  direc- 
tion, to  see  if  anything  could  be  done.  The  cavalry 
found  the  Zuyder  Zee  hard  frozen,  and  the  ships  firm- 
ly locked  in  the  ice.  So  they  put  spurs  to  their 
horses,  galloped  over  the  frozen  surface  of  the  sea, 
marched  up  to  the  ships,  and  called  on  them  to  sur- 
render. It  was  a  new  thing  in  war  for  ships  to  be 
charged  by  men  on  horseback ;  but  there  the  horse- 
men were,  with  strong  ice  under  them,  and  the  ships 
could  not  sail  away  from  them.  The  sailors  could 
make  a  fight,  of  course,  but  the  cavalry,  with  their 
cannon,  were  too  strong  for  them,  and  so  they  surren- 
dered without  a  battle,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his- 
tory  a  body  of  hussars  captured  a  squadron  of  ships 
at  anchor. 


YOCTNG   WASHINGTON  IN  THE  WOODS. 

THE  STORY  OF  A  PERILOUS  JOURNEY. 

No  man  ever  lived  whose  name  is  more  honored 
than  that  of  George  Washington,  and  no  man  ever 
deserved  his  fame  more.  All  the  success  that  ever 
came  to  him  was  won  by  hard  work.  He  succeeded 
because  he  was  the  kind  of  man  that  he  was,  and  not 
in  the  least  because  he  had  "  a  good  chance  "  to  dis- 
tinguish himself.  He  never  owed  anything  to  "  good 
luck,"  nor  even  to  a  special  education  in  the  business 
of  a  soldier.  Some  men  are  called  great  because  they 
have  succeeded  in  doing  great  things;  but  he  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  great  things  because  he  was  great  in 
himself. 

Everybody  who  knew  him,  even  as  a  boy,  seems  to 
have  respected  as  well  as  liked  him.  There  was 
something  in  his  character  which  made  men  think 


152  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

well  of  him.  When  he  was  only  sixteen  years  of  age 
Lord  Fairfax  admired  him  to  such  a  degree  that  he 
appointed  him  to  a  post  which  not  many  men  would 
have  been  trusted  to  fill.  He  put  the  boy  at  the 
head  of  a  surveying  party,  and  sent  him  across  the 
mountains  to  survey  the  valley  of  Virginia — a  vast 
region  which  was  then  unsettled.  So  well  did  Wash- 
ington perform  this  difficult  and  dangerous  task  that 
a  few  years  later,  when  he  was  only  twenty-one  years 
old,  the  Governor  of  Virginia  picked  him  out  for  a 
more  delicate  and  dangerous  piece  of  work. 

The  English  colonies  lay  along  the  Atlantic  coast, 
while  the  French  held  Canada.  The  country  west 
of  the  Alleghany  Mountains,  which  we  now  know  as 
Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  etc.,  was  claimed  by  both  the 
French  and  the  English,  though  only  the  Indians 
lived  there.  The  French  made  friends  of  the  savages, 
and  began  building  forts  at  different  points  in  that 
region,  and  putting  soldiers  there  to  keep  the  English 
away.  The  Governor  of  Virginia  wanted  to  put  a 
stop  to  this,  and  so  he  resolved  to  send  a  messenger 


Young  Washington  in  the  Woods.  153 

into  "  the  Great  Woods,"  as  the  western  country  was 
called,  to  warn  the  French  off,  and  to  win  the  friend- 
ship of  the  Indians  if  possible. 

For  such  a  service  he  needed  a  man  with  a  cool 
head,  good  sense,  great  courage,  and,  above  all,  what 
boys  call  "  grit ;"  for  whoever  should  go  would  have 
to  make  his  way  for  many  hundreds  of  miles  through 
a  trackless  wilderness,  over  mountains  and  rivers,  and 
among  hostile  Indians.  Young  Washington  had  al- 
ready shown  what  stuff  he  was  made  of,  and,  young 
as  he  was,  he  was  regarded  as  a  remarkable  man. 
The  governor  therefore  picked  him  out  as  the  very 
best  person  for  the  work  that  was  to  be  done. 

It  was  November  when  Washington  set  out,  and  the 
weather  was  very  cold  and  wet.  He  took  four  white 
men  and  two  Indians  with  him,  the  white  men  being 
hunters  who  knew  how  to  live  in  the  woods.  As  the 
country  they  had  to  pass  through  was  a  wilderness, 
they  had  to  carry  all  their  supplies  with  them  on  pack- 
horses.  They  rode  all  day  through  the  woods,  and 

when  night  came  slept  in  little  tents  by  some  spring 

9 


154  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

or  watercourse.  Day  after  day  they  marched  forward, 
until  at  last  they  reached  an  Indian  village,  near  the 
spot  where  Pittsburgh  now  stands,  and  there  they 
halted  to  make  friends  with  the  Indians. 

This  was  not  very  easy,  as  the  French  had  already 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  tribes  in  that  region ; 
but  Washington  persuaded  the  chief,  whose  name  was 
Tanacharisson,  to  go  with  him  to  visit  the  French 
commander,  who  was  stationed  in  a  fort  hundreds  of 
miles  away,  near  Lake  Erie. 

This  march,  like  the  other,  wras  slow  and  full  of 
hardships;  but  at  last  the  fort  was  reached,  and 
Washington  delivered  his  message  to  the  French 
officer.  A  day  or  two  later  the  Frenchman  gave  him 
his  answer,  which  was  that  the  western  country  be- 
longed to  the  French,  and  that  they  had  no  notion 
of  giving  it  up. 

All  the  trouble  Washington  had  met  in  going  north 
was  nothing  compared  with  what  was  before  him  in 
going  back  to  Virginia  again.  The  winter  was  now 
at  its  worst,  and  the  weather  was  terrible.  The  rivers 


Young  Washington  in  the  Woods.  155 

and  creeks  were  full  of  floating  ice,  and  the  woods 
were  banked  high  with  snow.  But  Washington  was 
not  to  be  daunted  by  any  kind  of  difficulty.  He  set 
out  on  his  return  march,  and  with  the  aid  of  canoes, 
in  which  his  baggage  was  carried  down  a  small 
stream  that  ran  in  that  direction,  he  took  his  party 
as  far  as  Venango,  in  the  northwestern  part  of  Penn- 
sylvania. 

There  he  found  that  he  could  go  no  farther  on 
horseback.  The  ground  was  frozen  on  top,  but  soft 
beneath,  and  the  poor  horses  broke  through  the  hard 
crust  at  every  step.  There  was  a  French  fort  at  Ve- 
nango, and  Washington  might  have  waited  there 
very  comfortably  for  better  weather ;  but  it  was  his 
duty  to  get  back  to  Virginia  as  soon  as  possible  with 
the  French  commander's  answer,  and  so  he  made  up 
his  mind  to  go  on,  even  at  the  risk  of  his  life. 

Leaving  the  rest  of  the  party  to  come  when  they 
could  with  the  horses,  Washington  and  a  single  com- 
panion named  Gist  set  out  on  foot  for  the  long  winter 
march.  As  they  had  no  pack-horses  to  carry  tents 


156  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

and  cooking-vessels  and  food,  they  had  to  leave  every- 
thing behind  except  what  they  could  carry  on  their 
backs ;  and  as  they  were  obliged  to  take  their  rifles, 
powder-horns,  and  bullet  -  pouches,  their  hunting- 
knives  and  hatchets,  and  a  blanket  apiece,  they  were 
pretty  heavily  loaded,  and  could  not  afford  to  burden 
themselves  with  much  else. 

Day  by  day  the  two  brave  fellows  trudged  on 
through  the  snow-drifts,  sleeping  at  night  as  best 
they  could,  exposed  to  the  biting  cold  of  the  winter, 
without  shelter,  except  such  as  the  woods  afforded. 
There  were  other  dangers  besides  cold  and  hunger. 
At  one  time  a  treacherous  Indian,  who  had  offered  to 
act  as  guide,  tried  to  lead  the  two  white  men  into  a 
trap.  As  they  suspected  his  purpose,  they  refused 
to  do  as  he  wished,  and  a  little  later  he  suddenly 
turned  about  and  shot  at  Washington,  who  was  only 
a  few  paces  distant.  Missing  his  aim,  he  was  quickly 
overpowered,  and  Gist  wanted  to  kill  him,  not  merely 
because  he  deserved  to  be  put  to  death  for  his  treach- 
ery, but  also  because,  if  allowed  to  go  free,  he  was 


WASHINGTON  AS  A  SURVEYS. 


Young  Washington  in  the  Woods.  159 

pretty  sure  to  bring  other  hostile  Indians  to  attack 
the  lonely  travellers  during  the  night. 

But  Washington  would  not  have  him  killed.  He 
made  him  build  a  camp-fire,  and  then  told  him  to 
leave  them  at  once.  The  Indian  did  so,  and  as  soon 
as  it  was  certain  that  he  was  out  of  sight  and  hear- 
ing the  two  young  men  set  out  to  make  their  escape. 
They  knew  the  Indian  would  soon  come  back  with 
others,  and  that  their  only  chance  for  life  was  to  push 
on  as  fast  as  they  could.  The  Indians  could  track 
them  in  the  snow,  but  by  setting  out  at  once  they 
hoped  to  get  so  far  ahead  that  they  could  not  be 
easily  overtaken. 

It  was  already  night,  and  the  travellers  were  weary 
from  their  day's  march,  but  they  could  not  afford  to 
stop  or  rest.  All  through  the  night  they  toiled  on. 
Morning  came,  and  they  must  have  felt  it  nearly  im- 
possible to  drag  their  weary  feet  farther,  but  still 
they  made  no  halt.  On  and  on  they  went,  and  it 
was  not  till  night  came  again  that  they  thought  it 
safe  at  last  to  stop  for  the  rest  and  sleep  they  needed 


160  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

so  badly.  The  strain  they  had  undergone  must  have 
been  fearful.  They  were  already  weary  and  way- 
worn when  they  first  met  the  treacherous  Indian,  and 
after  that  they  had  toiled  through  the  snow  for  two 
days  and  a  night  without  stopping  to  rest  or  daring 
to  refresh  themselves  with  sleep. 

Just  before  reaching  their  journey's  end  they  ar- 
rived at  the  brink  of  a  river  which  they  expected  to 
find  frozen  over ;  but  they  found  it  full  of  floating  ice 
instead.  Without  boat  or  bridge,  there  seemed  no 
chance  of  getting  across ;  but  after  a  while  they  man- 
aged to  make  a  rude  raft,  and  upon  this  they  under- 
took to  push  themselves  across  with  long  poles. 

The  current  was  very  strong,  the  raft  was  hard  to 
manage,  and  the  great  fields  of  ice  forced  it  out  of  its 
course.  In  trying  to  push  it  in  the  right  direction, 
Washington  missed  his  footing  and  fell  into  the  icy 
river.  His  situation  was  very  dangerous,  but  by  a 
hard  struggle  he  got  upon  the  floating  logs  again. 
Still  the  current  swept  them  along,  and  they  could 
not  reach  either  shore  of  the  stream. 


Young  Washington  in  the  Woods.  161 

At  last  they  managed  to  leap  from  the  logs,  not  to 
the  bank,  but  to  a  small  island  in  the  river.  There 
they  were  very  little  better  off  than  on  the  raft.  They 
were  on  land,  it  is  true,  but  there  was  still  no  way  of 
getting  to  shore;  and  as  there  was  nothing  on  the 
island  to  make  a  fire  with,  Washington  was  forced, 
drenched  as  he  was  with  ice-water,  to  pass  the  long 
winter  night  in  the  open  air,  without  so  much  as  a 
tiny  blaze  or  a  handful  of  coals  by  which  to  warm 
himself. 

Unfortunately  the  night  proved  to  be  a  very  cold 
one,  and  poor  Gist's  feet  and  hands  were  frozen  before 
morning.  Washington  got  no  frost-bites,  but  his  suf- 
ferings must  have  been  great. 

During  the  night  that  part  of  the  stream  which  lay 
between  the  island  and  the  shore  that  Washington 
wished  to  reach  froze  over,  and  in  the  morning  the 
travellers  were  able  to  renew  their  journey.  Once 
across  that,  the  worst  of  their  troubles  were  over. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  a  young  man  who  did  his 
duty  in  this  way  rapidly  rose  to  distinction  ?  He  was 


1 62  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

always  in  earnest  in  his  work,  and  always  did  it  with 
all  his  might.  He  never  shammed  or  shirked.  He 
never  let  his  own  comfort  or  his  own  interest  stand  in 
the  way  when  there  was  a  duty  to  be  done.  He  was 
a  great  man  before  he  became  a  celebrated  one,  and 
the  wisest  men  in  the  country  found  out  the  fact. 

When  the  revolution  came  there  were  other  soldiers 
older  and  better  known  than  Washington,  but  there 
were  men  in  Congress  who  had  watched  his  career 
carefully.  They  made  him,  therefore,  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  American  armies,  knowing  that  nobody 
else  was  so  sure  to  do  the  very  best  that  could  be 
done  for  the  country.  They  did  not  make  him  a 
great  man  by  appointing  him  to  the  chief  command ; 
they  appointed  him  because  they  knew  he  was  a 
great  man  already. 


THE  STOKY  OF  CATHERINE. 

PETER  THE  GREAT,  the  emperor  who,  in  a  few  years, 
changed  Russia  from  a  country  of  half-savage  tribes 
into  a  great  European  nation,  was  one  day  visiting 
one  of  his  officers,  and  saw  in  his  house  a  young  girl, 
who  attracted  his  attention  by  her  beauty  and  her 
graceful  manners.  This  girl  was  a  prisoner  named 
Martha,  and  she  was  living  as  a  sort  of  servant  and 
housekeeper  in  the  family  of  the  Russian  officer.  She 
had  been  taken  prisoner  when  the  town  she  lived  in 
was  captured.  Nobody  knows,  even  to  this  day,  ex- 
actly who  she  was,  except  that  she  was  a  poor  orphan 
girl  who  had  been  brought  up  by  a  village  clergy- 
man ;  but  it  is  generally  believed  that  her  father  was 
a  Livonian  peasant. 

Martha's  beauty  and  the  brightness  of  her  mind 
pleased  the  emperor  so  much  that,  after  a  while,  he 


164  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

made  up  his  mind  to  marry  her,  in  spite  of  her  hum 
ble  origin.  Peter  was  in  the  habit  of  doing  pretty 
much  as  he  pleased,  whether  his  nobles  liked  it  01 
not;  but  even  he  dared  not  make  a  captive  peasant 
girl  the  Empress  of  Russia.  He  therefore  married 
her  privately,  in  the  presence  of  a  few  of  his  nearest 
friends,  who  were  charged  to  keep  the  secret.  Before 
the  marriage  took  place  he  had  Martha  baptized  in 
the  Russian  Church,  and  changed  her  name  to  Cath- 
erine. 

Now  Peter  had  a  bad  habit  of  losing  his  temper, 
and  getting  so  angry  that  he  fell  into  fits.  As  he 
was  an  absolute  monarch  and  could  do  whatever  he 
liked,  it  was  very  dangerous  for  anybody  to  go  near 
him  when  he  was  angry.  He  could  have  a  head 
chopped  off  as  easily  as  he  could  order  his  breakfast. 
But  he  was  very  fond  of  Catherine,  and  she  was  the 
only  person  who  was  not  in  the  least  afraid  of  him. 
She  soon  learned  how  to  manage  him,  and  even  in  his 
worst  fits  she  could  soothe  and  quiet  the  old  bear. 

Peter  was  nearly  always  at  war,  and  in  spite  of  the 


The  Story  of  Catherine.  165 

hardships  and  dangers  of  the  camp  and  battle-field 
Catherine  always  marched  with  him  at  the  head  of 
the  army.  The  soldiers  wondered  at  her  bravery,  and 
learned  to  like  her  more  than  anybody  else.  If  food 
was  scarce,  the  roads  rough,  and  the  marches  long^ 
they  remembered  that  Catherine  was  with  them,  and 
were  ashamed  to  grumble.  If  she  could  stand  the 
hardships  and  face  the  dangers,  they  thought  rough 
soldiers  ought  not  to  complain. 

Catherine  was  a  wise  woman  as  well  as  a  brave 
one.  She  soon  learned  as  much  of  the  art  of  war  as 
Peter  knew,  and  in  every  time  of  doubt  or  difficulty 
her  advice  wras  asked,  and  her  opinion  counted  for  as 
much  as  if  she  had  been  one  of  the  generals.  After 
she  had  thus  shown  how  able  a  woman  she  was,  and 
had  won  the  friendship  of  everybody  about  her  by 
her  good  temper  and  her  pleasant  ways,  Peter  pub- 
licly announced  his  marriage,  and  declared  Catherine 
to  be  his  wife  and  czarina.  But  still  he  did  not 
crown  her. 

This  was  in  the  year  1711,  and  immediately  after- 


1 66  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

wards  Peter  marched  iuto  the  Turkish  country  at  the 
head  of  forty  thousand  men.  This  army  was  not 
nearly  large  enough  to  meet  the  Turks,  but  Peter  had 
other  armies  in  different  places,  and  had  ordered  all  of 
them  to  meet  him  on  the  march.  For  various  reasons 
all  these  armies  failed  to  join  him,  and  he  found  him- 
self in  a  Turkish  province  with  a  very  small  number 
of  troops.  The  danger  was  so  great  that  he  ordered 
Catherine  and  all  the  other  women  to  go  back  to  a 
place  of  safety.  But  Catherine  would  not  go.  She 
had  made  up  her  mind  to  stay  with  Peter  at  the  head 
of  the  army,  and  was  so  obstinate  about  it  that  at 
last  Peter  gave  her  leave  to  remain.  Then  the  wives 
of  the  generals,  and,  finally,  of  the  lower  officers,  want- 
ed to  stay  also.  She  persuaded  Peter  to  let  them  do 
so,  and  the  end  of  it  was  that  the  women  all  stayed 
with  the  army. 

Everything  went  against  Peter  on  this  march.  The 
weather  was  very  dry.  Swarms  of  locusts  were  in  the 
country,  eating  every  green  thing.  There  was  no  food 
for  the  horses,  and  many  of  them  starved  to  death. 


The  Story  of  Catherine.  167 

It  was  hard  for  the  Russians  to  go  forward  or  to  go 
backward,  and  harder  still  to  stay  where  they  were. 

At  last  the  soldiers  in  front  reported  that  the 
Turks  were  coming,  and  Peter  soon  saw  a  great  army 
of  two  hundred  thousand  fierce  Moslems  in  front  of 
his  little  force,  which  counted  up  only  thirty-eight 
thousand  men.  Seeing  the  odds  against  him  he  gave 
the  order  to  retreat,  and  the  army  began  its  backward 
march.  As  it  neared  the  river  Pruth  a  new  danger 
showed  itself.  The  advance-guard  brought  word 
that  a  great  force  of  savage  Grim  Tartars  held  the 
other  bank  of  the  river,  completely  cutting  off  Peter's 
retreat. 

The  state  of  things  seemed  hopeless.  With  two 
hundred  thousand  Turks  on  one  side,  and  a  strong 
force  of  Grim  Tartars  holding  a  river  on  the  other, 
Peter's  little  army  was  completely  hemmed  in.  There 
was  no  water  in  the  camp,  and  when  the  soldiers 
went  to  the  river  for  it,  the  Tartars  on  the  other  shore 
kept  up  a  fierce  fight  with  them.  A  great  horde  of 
Turkish  cavalry  tried  hard  to  cut  off  the  supply  en- 


1 68  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

tirely  by  pushing  themselves  between  Peter's  camp 
and  the  river,  but  the  Russians  managed  to  keep 
them  back  by  hard  fighting,  and  to  keep  a  road  open 
to  the  river. 

Peter  knew  now  that  unless  help  should  come  to 
him  in  some  shape,  and  that  very  quickly,  he  must 
lose  not  only  his  army,  but  his  empire  also,  for  if  the 
Turks  should  take  him  prisoner,  it  was  certain  that  his 
many  enemies  would  soon  conquer  Russia,  and  divide 
the  country  among  themselves.  He  saw  no  chance 
of  help  coming,  but  he  made  up  his  mind  to  fight  as 
long  as  he  could.  He  formed  his  men  in  a  hollow 
square,  with  the  women  in  the  middle,  and  faced  his 
enemies. 

The  Turks  flung  themselves  in  great  masses  upon 
his  lines,  trying  to  crush  the  litile  force  of  Russians 
by  mere  numbers.  But  Peter's  brave  men  remem- 
bered that  Catherine  was  inside  their  hollow  square, 
and  they  stood  firmly  at  their  posts,  driving  back  the 
Turks  with  frightful  slaughter.  Again  and  again 
and  again  they  fell  upon  his  lines  in  heavy  masses, 


The  Story  of  Catherine.  1 69 

and  again  and  again  and  again  they  were  driven  back, 
leaving  the  field  black  with  their  dead. 

This  could  not  go  on  forever,  of  course,  and  both 
sides  saw  what  the  end  must  be.  As  the  Turks  had 
many  times  more  men  than  Peter,  it  was  plain  that 
they  would,  at  last,  win  by  destroying  all  the  Rus- 
sians. 

For  three  days  and  nights  the  terrible  slaughter 
went  on.  Peter's  men  beat  back  the  Turks  at  every 
charge,  but  every  hour  their  line  grew  thinner.  At 
the  end  of  the  third  day  sixteen  thousand  of  their 
brave  comrades  lay  dead  upon  the  field,  and  only 
twenty-two  thousand  remained  to  face  the  enemy. 

Towards  night  on  the  third  day  a  terrible  rumor 
spread  through  their  camp.  A  whisper  ran  along  the 
line  that  the  ammunition  was  giving  out.  A  few 
more  shots  from  each  soldier's  gun,  and  there  would 
be  nothing  left  to  fight  with. 

Then  Peter  fell  into  the  sulks.  As  long  as  he  could 
fight  he  had  kept  up  his  spirits,  but  now  that  all  was 
lost,  and  his  great  career  seemed  near  its  end,  he  grew 


170  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

angry,  and  went  to  his  tent  to  have  one  of  his  savage 
fits.  He  gave  orders  that  nobody  should  come  near 
him,  and  there  was  no  officer  or  soldier  in  all  the 
army  who  would  have  dared  enter  the  tent  where 
he  lay,  in  his  dangerous  mood. 

But  if  Peter  had  given  up  in  despair,  Catherine 
had  not.  In  spite  of  Peter's  order  and  his  anger,  she 
boldly  went  into  his  tent,  and  asked  him  to  give  her 
leave  to  put  an  end  to  the  war  by  making  a  treaty 
of  peace  with  the  Turks,  if  she  could.  It  seemed  ab- 
surd to  talk  of  such  a  thing,  or  to  expect  the  Turks 
to  make  peace  on  any  terms  when  they  had  so  good 
a  chance  to  conquer  Peter,  once  for  all,  and  to  make 
him  their  prisoner.  Nobody  but  Catherine,  perhaps, 
would  have  thought  of  such  a  thing;  but  Catherine 
was  a  woman  horn  for  great  affairs,  and  she  had  no 
thought  of  giving  up  any  chance  there  might  be  to 
save  Peter  and  the  empire. 

Her  first  difficulty  was  with  Peter  himself.  She 
could  not  offer  terms  of  peace  to  the  Turks  until  Pe- 
ter gave  her  leave,  and  promised  to  fulfil  whatever 


SHE  WENT  BOLDLY  INTO  HIS  TENT. 


The  Story  of  Catherine.  1 73 

bargain  she  might  make  with  them.  She  managed 
this  part  of  the  matter,  and  then  set  to  work  at  the 
greater  task  of  dealing  with  the  Turks. 

o  o 

She  knew  that  the  Turkish  army  was  under  the 
command  of  the  Grand  Vizier,  and  she  knew  some- 
thing of  the  ways  of  Grand  Viziers.  It  was  not  worth 
while  to  send  any  kind  of  messenger  to  a  Turkish 
commander  without  sending  him  also  a  bribe  in.  the 
shape  of  a  present,  and  Catherine  was  sure  that  the 
bribe  must  be  a  very  large  one  to  buy  the  peace 
she  wanted.  But  where  was  she  to  get  the  present? 
There  was  no  money  in  Peter's  army-chest,  and  no 
way  of  getting  any  from  Russia.  Catherine  was  not 
discouraged  by  that  fact.  She  first  got  together  all 
her  own  jewels,  and  then  went  to  all  the  officers' 
wives  and  asked  each  of  them  for  whatever  she  had 
that  was  valuable — money,  jewels,  and  plate.  She 
gave  each  of  them  a  receipt  for  what  she  took,  and 
promised  to  pay  them  the  value  of  their  goods  when 
she  should  get  back  to  Moscow.  She  went  in  this 

way  throughout  the  camp,  and  got  together  all  the 

10 


174  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

money,  all  the  jewelry,  and  all  the  silver  plate  that 
were  to  be  found  in  the  army.  No  one  person  had 
much,  of  course ;  but  when  the  things  were  collected 
together,  they  made  a  very  rich  present,  or  bribe,  for 
the  Grand  Vizier. 

With  this  for  a  beginning,  Catherine  soon  convinced 
the  Turkish  commander  that  it  was  better  to  make 
peace  with  Russia  than  to  run  the  risk  of  having  to 
fight  the  great  armies  that  were  already  marching 
towards  Turkey.  After  some  bargaining  she  secured 
a  treaty  which  allowed  Peter  to  go  back  to  Russia  in 
safety,  and  thus  she  saved  the  czar  and  the  empire. 
A  few  years  later  Peter  crowned  her  as  Empress  of 
Russia,  and  when  he  died  he  named  her  as  the  fittest 
person  to  be  his  successor  on  the  throne. 

Thus  the  peasant  girl  of  Livonia,  who  was  made  a 
captive  in  war  and  a  servant,  rose  by  her  genius  and 
courage  to  be  the  sole  ruler  of  a  great  empire — the 
first  woman  who  ever  reigned  over  Russia.  It  is  a 
strange  but  true  story. 


THE  VIRGINIA   WIFE -MARKET. 

TWO  SHIPLOADS   OF   SWEETHEARTS  AND  THE   PRICES   PAID   FOR 

THEM. 

THE  first  English  settlement  in  America  that  came 
to  anything  was  made  in  the  most  absurd  way  possi- 
ble. A  great  company  of  London  merchants  set 
about  the  work  of  planting  an  English  colony  in  Vir- 
ginia, and  they  were  very  much  in  earnest  about  it 
too;  but  if  they  had  been  as  anxious  to  have  the 
scheme  fail  as  they  were  to  make  it  succeed,  they 
could  hardly  have  done  worse  for  it  than  they  did  in 
some  respects. 

They  knew  that  the  colonists  must  have  something 
to  eat  and  must  defend  themselves  against  the  In- 
dians, and  so  it  ought  to  have  been  plain  to  them  that 
the  first  men  sent  out  must  be  stout  farmers,  who 
could  cut  down  trees,  plough  the  ground,  raise  food 


1 76  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

enough  for  the  people  to  eat,  and  handle  guns  well, 
if  need  be.  The  work  to  be  done  was  that  of  farm- 
ers, wood-choppers,  and  men  who  could  make  a  liv- 
ing for  themselves  in  a  new  country,  and  common- 
sense  ought  to  have  led  the  London  Company  to  send 
out  nobody  but  men  of  that  kind  to  make  the  first 
settlement.  Then,  after  those  men  had  cleared  some 
land,  built  some  houses,  and  raised  their  first  crop, 
men  of  other  kinds  might  have  been  sent  as  fast  as 
there  was  need  for  their  services. 

But  that  was  not  the  way  in  which  the  London 
Company  went  to  work.  They  chose  for  their  first 
settlers  about  the  most  unfit  men  they  could  have 
found  for  such  a  purpose.  There  were  one  hundred 
and  five  of  them  in  all,  and  forty-eight  of  them — or 
nearly  half  of  the  whole  company — were  what  people 
in  those  days  called  "gentlemen" — that  is  to  say, 
they  were  the  sons  of  rich  men.  They  had  never 
learned  how  to  do  any  kind  of  work,  and  had  been 
brought  up  to  think  that  a  gentleman  could  not  work 
without  degrading  himself  and  losing  his  right  to  be 


The  Virginia  Wife- Market.  177 

called  a  gentleman.  There  were  a  good  many  "  ser- 
vants" also  iu  the  party,  and  probably  most  of 
them  were  brought  to  wait  upon  the  gentlemen. 
There  were  very  few  farmers  and  not  many  me- 
chanics in  the  party,  although  farmers  and  mechan- 
ics were  the  men  most  needed.  There  were  some 
goldsmiths,  who  expected  to  work  the  gold  as  soon 
as  the  colonists  should  find  it,  and  there  was  a  per- 
fume-maker. It  is  hard  to  say  in  what  way  this 
perfume-man  was  expected  to  make  himself  useful  in 
the  work  of  planting  a  settlement  in  the  swamps  of 
Virginia ;  but,  as  there  were  so  many  fine  "  gentle- 
men "  in  the  party,  the  perfumer  probably  thought 
his  wares  would  be  in  demand. 

None  of  the  men  brought  families  with  them. 
They  were  single  men,  who  came  out  to  this  country, 
not  to  make  comfortable  homes  for  wives  and  chil- 
dren, by  hard  and  patient  work,  but  to  find  gold  and 
pearls,  or  to  grow  rich  in  some  other  quick  and  easy 
way,  and  then  to  go  back  and  live  in  ease  in  England. 

It  is  a  wonder  that  such  men  ever  succeeded  in 


1 78  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

planting  a  settlement  at  all.  From  the  first  it  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  clear  to  them  that  they  ought 
to  raise  plenty  of  food  for  themselves  and  learn  how 
to  live  by  their  own  work.  They  expected  the  com- 
pany in  London  to  send  them  most  of  their  food  and 
everything  else  that  they  needed.  They  had  plenty 
of  rich  land  and  a  good  climate,  but  they  expected  to 
be  fed  by  people  three  thousand  miles  away,  across  a 
great  ocean. 

Luckily,  there  was  one  man  of  sense  and  spirit 
among  them — the  celebrated  Captain  John  Smith— 
who  got  them  to  work  a  little,  and,  after  many  hard- 
ships and  two  or  three  narrow  escapes  from  failure, 
the  colony  was  firmly  planted. 

The  London  Company  sent  out  ships  every  year 
with  supplies  and  fresh  colonists;  but,  strange  as  it 
seems,  most  of  the  men  sent  were  unmarried,  and 
even  those  who  had  wives  and  children  left  them  in 
England. 

When  we  think  of  it,  this  was  a  very  bad  way  to 
begin  the  work  of  settling  a  new  country.  The  bach- 


The  Virginia  Wife-Market.  179 

elors,  of  course,  did  not  intend  to  stay  all  their  lives 
in  a  country  where  there  were  no  women  and  chil- 
dren. They  meant  to  make  some  money  as  quickly 
as  they  could  and  then  go  back  to  England  to  live. 
The  married  men  who  had  left  their  families  behind 
them  were  in  still  greater  haste  to  make  what  they 
could  and  go  home.  In  short,  for  a  dozen  years  after 
the  colony  was  planted,  nobody  thought  of  it  as  his 
real  home,  where  he  meant  to  live  out  his  life.  If 
the  colonists  had  been  married  men,  with  wives  and 
children  in  Virginia,  they  would  have  done  all  they 
could  to  make  the  new  settlement  a  pleasant  one  to 
live  in :  they  would  have  built  good  houses,  set  up 
schools,  and  worked  hard  to  improve  their  own  fort- 
unes and  to  keep  order  in  the  colony. 

But  year  after  year  the  ships  brought  cargoes  of 
single  men  to  Virginia,  and  the  settlement  was  scarce- 
ly more  than  a  camp  in  the  woods.  After  the  compa- 
ny had  been  trying  for  a  good  many  years  to  people  a 
new  country  by  landing  shiploads  of  bachelors  on  its 
shores,  it  began  to  dawn  upon  their  minds  that  if  the 


180  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

Virginia  settlement  was  ever  to  grow  into  a  thriving 
and  lasting  colony,  there  must  be  women  and  children 
there  to  make  happy  homes,  as  well  as  men  to  raise 
wheat,  corn,  and  tobacco. 

Sir  Edwin  Sandys  was  the  wise  man  who  saw  all 
this  most  clearly.  He  urged  the  company  to  send 
out  hard-working  married  men,  who  would  take  their 
wives  and  children  with  them  to  Virginia  and  settle 
there  for  good.  But  this  was  not  all.  There  were 
already  a  great  many  bachelors  in  the  colony,  and 
there  were  no  young  women  there  for  them  to  marry. 
Sir  Edwin  knew  that  if  these  bachelors  were  to  stay 
in  Virginia  and  become  prosperous  colonists  they 
must  have  a  chance  to  marry  and  set  up  homes  of 
their  own.  So  he  went  to  work  in  England  to  get 
together  a  cargo  of  sweethearts  for  the  colonists.  He 
persuaded  ninety  young  women  of  good  character  to 
go  out  in  one  of  the  company's  ships,  to  marry  young 
men  in  Virginia. 

The  plan  was  an  odd  one,  but  it  was  managed 
with  good  sense  and  did  well  for  everybody  con- 


The  Virginia  Wife-Market.  181 

cerned.  It  was  agreed  that  the  company  should 
provide  the  young  women  with  such  clothing  and 
other  things  as  they  would  need  for  the  voyage, 
and  should  give  them  free  passage  on  board  the  ship. 
When  they  landed  in  Virginia  they  were  to  be  per- 
fectly free  to  marry  or  not,  as  they  pleased.  If  any 
of  them  did  not  at  once  find  husbands  to  their  liking 
they  were  to  be  provided  for  in  good  homes  until 
they  chose  to  marry. 

But  no  man  could  marry  one  of  these  young  wom- 
en without  paying  for  her  in  tobacco,  which  was  used 
instead  of  money  in  Virginia.  The  girls  were  not  to 
be  sold,  exactly,  but  it  was  expected  that  each  colonist 
who  married  one  of  them  should  pay  the  company  as 
much  as  it  had  spent  in  bringing  her  across  the  ocean. 

And  the  men  of  the  colony  were  glad  enough  to 
do  this.  When  the  shipload  of  sweethearts  landed 
at  Jamestown  a  large  number  of  men  who  were  tired 
of  bachelor  life  hurried  to  the  wharf  to  get  wives  for 
themselves  if  they  could.  They  went  among  the 
young  maids,  introduced  themselves,  got  acquainted, 


1 82  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

and  did  all  the  courting  that  was  necessary  in  a  very 
/ittle  time.  The  young  women  were  honest,  good, 
well-brought-up  girls,  and  among  the  many  men 
there  were  plenty  of  good,  industrious,  and  brave  fel- 
lows who  wanted  good  wives,  and  so  all  the  girls 
were  "engaged"  at  once.  The  men  paid  down  one 
hundred  and  twenty  pounds  of  tobacco  apiece — for 
that  was  the  price  fixed  upon  —  and,  as  there  was 
nothing  to  wait  for,  the  clergymen  were  sent  for  and 
the  weddings  took  place  immediately. 

It  was  an  odd  thing  to  do,  of  course,  but  the  cir- 
cumstances were  very  unusual,  and  the  plan  of  import- 
ing sweethearts  by  the  cargo  really  seems  to  have  been 
a  very  good  one.  It  must  have  been  a  strange  sight 
when  the  girls  landed  and  met  the  men  who  had 
come  to  the  town  to  woo  and  marry  them.  And 
many  of  the  girls  must  have  felt  that  they  took  great 
risks  in  coming  three  thousand  miles  from  home  and 
marrying  men  whom  they  had  known  for  so  short  a 
time;  but  it  seems  that  the  marriages  were  happy 
ones,  in  spite  of  the  haste  in  which  they  were  made. 


The  Virginia  Wife-Market.  183 

The  newly-married  pairs  went  to  work  in  earnest  to 
create  good  homes  for  themselves,  and  when  their 
English  friends  learned  from  their  letters  how  happy 
and  prosperous  they  were,  another  company  of  sixty 
sweethearts  set  sail  for  the  colony  and  became  the 
wives  of  good  men. 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  English  camp  at  James- 
town was  changed  into  a  real  colony  of  people  who 
meant  to  live  in  America  and  to  build  up  a  thriving 
community  here.  Now  that  the  men  had  wives  and 
children  to  provide  for,  they  no  longer  lived  "from 
hand  to  mouth,"  hoping  to  make  a  fortune  by  some 
lucky  stroke,  and  then  to  leave  the  colony  forever. 
They  went  to  work,  instead,  to  cultivate  the  land,  to 
build  good  houses,  to  make  and  save  money,  to  edu- 
cate their  children,  and  to  become  prosperous  and 
happy  in  their  homes.  Virginia,  which  had  been  a 
mere  stopping  -  place  to  them,  was  now  their  own 
country,  where  their  families  lived  and  their  nearest 
friends  were  around  them.  There  they  expected  to 
pass  their  lives  in  efforts  to  better  their  own  fortunes, 


184  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

and  to  make  the  country  a  pleasant  one  for  their  chil- 
dren and  grandchildren  after  them  to  live  in.  They 
were  anxious  to  have  schools  and  churches,  and  to 
keep  up  right  standards  of  morals  and  proper  man- 
ners in  the  colony,  so  that  their  children  might  grow 
to  be  good  and  happy  men  and  women. 

That  is  the  way  in  which  the  first  English  colony 
in  America  became  prosperous,  and  many  of  the  men 
who  afterwards  became  famous  in  the  history  of 
the  nation  were  the  great -great -grand  sons  of  the 
women  whom  Sir  Edwin  Sandys  sent  out  as  sweet- 
hearts for  the  colonists. 

The  Pilgrims,  who  settled  at  Plymouth  about  the 
time  that  all  this  happened,  brought  their  families 
with  them,  and  quickly  made  themselves  at  home  in 
America.  The  planting  of  these  two  colonies — the 
first  in  Virginia  and  the  second  in  Massachusetts — 
was  the  beginning  from  which  our  great,  free,  and 
happy  country,  with  its  fifty  millions  of  people,  has 
grown. 


THE  BOYHOOD  OF  DANIEL  WEBSTER* 

DANIEL  WEBSTEE,  the  great  statesman,  orator,  and 
lawyer,  was  born  on  the  18th  of  January,  1782. 

His  father  lived  near  the  head-waters  of  the  Mer- 
rimac  River,  and  the  only  school  within  reach  was  a 
poor  one  kept  open  for  a  few  months  every  winter. 
There  Webster  learned  all  that  the  country  school- 
master could  teach  him,  which  was  very  little;  but 
he  acquired  a  taste  which  did  more  for  him  than  the 
reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic  of  the  school.  He 
learned  to  like  books,  and  to  want  knowledge;  and 
when  a  boy  gets  really  hungry  and  thirsty  for  knowl- 
edge it  is  not  easy  to  keep  him  ignorant.  When 
some  of  the  neighbors  joined  in  setting  up  a  little 

*  For  some  of  the  materials  used  in  this  sketch  I  am  indebted  to  the 
work  entitled  "  The  Boyhood  of  Great  Men,"  by  John  G.  Edgar,  pub- 
lished by  Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers. 


1 86  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

circulating  library,  young  Webster  read  every  book 
in  it  two  or  three  times,  and  even  committed  to  mem- 
ory a  large  part  of  the  best  of  them.  It  was  this 
eagerness  for  education  on  his  part  that  led  his  father 
afterwards  to  send  him  to  Exeter  to  school,  and  later 
to  put  him  into  Dartmouth  College. 

There  are  not  many  boys  in  our  time  who  have  not 
declaimed  parts  of  Webster's  great  speeches ;  and  it 
will  interest  them  to  know  that  the  boy  who  after- 
wards made  those  speeches  could  never  declaim  at  all 
while  he  was  at  school.  He  learned  his  pieces  well, 
and  practised  them  in  his  own  room,  but  he  could 
not  speak  them  before  people  to  save  his  life. 

Webster  was  always  fond  of  shooting  and  fishing, 
and,  however  hard  he  studied,  the  people  around  him 
called  him  lazy  and  idle,  because  he  would  spend 
whole  days  in  these  sports.  Once,  while  he  was 
studying  under  Dr.  Woods  to  prepare  for  college, 
that  gentleman  spoke  to  him  on  the  subject,  and  hurt 
his  feelings  a  little.  The  boy  went  to  his  room  deter- 
mined to  have  revenge,  and  this  is  the  way  he  took 


The  Boyhood  of  Daniel  Webster.  187 

to  get  it.  The  usual  Latin  lesson  was  one  hundred 
lines  of  Virgil,  but  Webster  spent  the  whole  night 
over  the  book.  The  next  morning  before  breakfast 
he  went  to  Dr.  Woods  and  read  the  whole  lesson  cor- 
rectly. Then  he  said : 

"Will  you  hear  a  few  more  lines,  doctor?" 

The  teacher  consenting,  Webster  read  on  and  on 
and  on,  while  the  breakfast  grew  cold.  Still  there 
was  no  sign  of  the  boy's  stopping,  and  the  hungry 
doctor  at  last  asked  how  much  farther  he  was  pre- 
pared to  read. 

"To  the  end  of  the  twelfth  book  of  the  ^Eneid," 
answered  the  "idle1'  boy,  in  triumph. 

After  that,  Webster  did  not  give  up  his  hunting 
and  fishing,  but  he  worked  so  hard  at  his  lessons,  and 
got  on  so  fast,  that  there  was  no  further  complaint  of 
his  "idleness."  He  not  only  learned  the  lessons 
given  to  him,  but  more,  every  day,  and  besides  this 
he  read  every  good  book  he  could  lay  his  hands  on, 
for  he  was  not  at  all  satisfied  to  know  only  what 
could  be  found  in  the  school-books. 


1 88  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

Webster's  father  was  poor  and  in  debt,  but  finding 
how  eager  his  boy  was  for  education,  and  seeing, 
too,  that  he  possessed  unusual  ability,  he  determined, 
ill  as  he  could  afford  the  expense,  to  send  him  to  col- 
lege. Accordingly,  young  Daniel  went  to  Dartmouth. 

Many  anecdotes  are  told  to  illustrate  the  character 
of  young  Dan.  He  was  always  lavish  of  his  money 
when  he  had  any,  while  his  brother  was  careful  but 
generous,  especially  to  Dan,  whom  he  greatly  admired. 
On  one  occasion  the  boys  went  to  a  neighboring  town 
on  a  high  holiday,  each  with  a  quarter  of  a  dollar  in 
his  pocket. 

"Well,  Dan,"  said  the  father  on  their  return,  "what 
did  you  do  with  your  money  ?"• 

"  Spent  it,"  answered  the  boy. 

"  And  what  did  you  do  with  yours,  Zeke?" 

"  Lent  it  to  Dan,"  was  the  answer.  The  fact  was 
that  Dan  had  spent  both  quarters. 

Young  Webster  was  very  industrious  in  his  studies, 
as  we  have  seen,  and  he  was  physically  strong  and 
active.,  as  his  fondness  for  sport  proved ;  but  he  could 


TO  THE  END  OF  THE  TWELFTH  BOOK  OF  THE 
THE  'IDLE'  BOY,  IN  TRIUMPH." 


,'  ANSWERED 


The  Boyhood  of  Daniel  Webster.  191 

never  endure  farm-work.  One  day  his  father  wanted 
him  to  help  him  in  cutting  hay  with  a  scythe;  but 
very  soon  the  boy  complained  that  the  scythe  was 
not  "  hung  "  to  suit  him ;  that  is  to  say,  it  was  not  set 
at  a  proper  angle  upon  its  handle.  The  old  gentle- 
man adjusted  it,  but  still  it  did  not  suit  the  boy. 
After  repeated  attempts  to  arrange  it  to  Dan's  lik- 
ing, the  father  said,  impatiently,  "  Well,  hang  it  to 
suit  yourself."  And  young  Dan  immediately  "hung1' 
it  over  a  branch  of  an  apple-tree  and  left  it  there. 
That  was  the  hanging  which  pleased  him. 

After  finishing  his  college  course  Webster  began 
studying  law,  but  having  no  money,  and  being  un- 
willing to  tax  his  father  for  further  support,  he  went 
into  Northern  Maine,  and  taught  school  there  for  a 
time.  While  teaching  he  devoted  his  evenings  to  the 
work  of  copying  deeds  and  other  legal  documents, 
and  by  close  economy  managed  to  live  upon  the 
money  thus  earned,  thus  saving  the  whole  of  his 
salary  as  a  teacher.  With  this  money  to  live  on,  he 

went  to  Boston,  studied  law,  and  soon  distinguished 

11 


192  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

himself.  The  story  of  his  life  as  a  public  man,  in 
the  senate,  in  the  cabinet,  and  at  the  bar.  is  well 
known,  and  does  not  belong  to  this  sketch  of  his 
boyhood. 


THE  SCULLION  WHO  BECAME  A  SCULPTOR. 

IN  the  little  Italian  village  of  Possagno  there  lived 
a  jolly  stone-cutter  named  Pisano.  He  was  poor,  of 
course,  or  he  would  not  have  been  a  stone-cutter ;  but 
he  was  full  of  good-humor,  and  everybody  liked  him. 

There  was  one  little  boy,  especially,  who  loved  old 
Pisano,  and  whom  old  Pisano  loved  more  than  any- 
body else  in  the  world.  This  was  Antonio  Canova, 
Pisano's  grandson,  who  had  come  to  live  with  him, 
because  his  father  was  dead,  and  his  mother  had  mar- 
ried a  harsh  man,  who  treated  the  little  Antonio 
roughly. 

Antonio  was  a  frail  little  fellow,  and  his  grandfa- 
ther liked  to  have  him  near  him  during  his  working 
hours. 

While  Pisano  worked  at  stone-cutting,  little  Cano- 
va played  at  it  and  at  other  things,  such  as  modelling 


194  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

in  clay,  drawing,  etc.  The  old  grandfather,  plain,  un- 
educated man  as  he  was,  soon  discovered  that  the 
pale-faced  little  fellow  at  his  side  had  something 
more  than  an  ordinary  child's  dexterity  at  such 
things. 

The  boy  knew  nothing  of  art  or  of  its  laws,  but  he 
fashioned  his  lumps  of  clay  into  forms  of  real  beauty. 
His  wise  grandfather,  seeing  what  this  indicated,  hired 
a  teacher  to  give  him  some  simple  lessons  in  drawing, 
so  that  he  might  improve  himself  if  he  really  had  the 
artistic  ability  which  the  old  man  suspected.  Pisano 
was  much  too  poor,  as  he  knew,  ever  to  give  the  boy 
an  art-education  and  make  an  artist  of  him,  but  he 
thought  that  Antonio  might  at  least  learn  to  be  a 
better  stone-cutter  than  common. 

As  the  boy  grew  older  he  began  to  help  in  the  shop 
during  the  day,  while  in  the  evening  his  grandmother 
told  him  stories  or  sang  or  recited  poetry  to  him. 
All  these  things  were  educating  him,  though  without 
his  knowing  it,  for  they  were  awakening  his  taste  and 
stimulating  his  imagination,  which  found  expression 


The  Scullion  who  Became  a  Sculptor.        1 95 

in  the  clay  models  that  he  loved  to  make  in  his  leis- 
ure hours. 

It  so  happened  that  Signor  Faliero,  the  head  of  a 
noble  Venetian  family,  and  a  man  of  rare  understand- 
ing in  art,  had  a  place  near  Pisano's  house,  and  at  cer- 
tain seasons  the  nobleman  entertained  many  distin- 
guished guests  there.  When  the  palace  was  very  full 
of  visitors,  old  Pisano  was  sometimes  hired  to  help 
the  servants  with  their  tasks,  and  the  boy  Canova, 
when  he  was  twelve  years  old,  sometimes  did  scul- 
lion's work  there,  also,  for  a  day,  when  some  great 
feast  was  given. 

On  one  of  these  occasions,  when  the  Signor  Faliero 
was  to  entertain  a  very  large  company  at  dinner, 
young  Canova  was  at  work  over  the  pots  and  pans 
in  the  kitchen.  The  head-servant  made  his  appear- 
ance, just  before  the  dinner  hour,  in  great  distress. 

The  man  who  had  been  engaged  to  furnish  the 
great  central  ornament  for  the  table  had,  at  the  last 
moment,  sent  word  that  he  had  spoiled  the  piece.  It 
was  now  too  late  to  secure  another,  and  there  was 


196  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

nothing  to  take  its  place.  The  great  vacant  space  in 
the  centre  of  the  table  spoiled  the  effect  of  all  that 
had  been  done  to  make  the  feast  artistic  in  appear- 
ance, and  it  was  certain  that  Signor  Faliero  would  be 
sorely  displeased. 

But  what  was  to  be  done  ?  The  poor  fellow  whose 
business  it  was  to  arrange  the  table  was  at  his  wits' 
end. 

While  every  one  stood  dismayed  and  wondering, 
the  begrimed  scullion  boy  timidly  approached  the 
distressed  head-servant,  and  said, 

"  If  you  will  let  me  try,  I  think  I  can  make  some- 
thing that  will  do." 

"  You  !"  exclaimed  the  servant ;  "and  who  are  you?" 

"I  am  Antonio  Canova,  Pisano's  grandson,"  an- 
swered the  pale-faced  little  fellow. 

"  And  what  can  you  do,  pray  ?"  asked  the  man,  in 
astonishment  at  the  conceit  of  the  lad. 

"  I  can  make  you  something  that  will  do  for  the 
middle  of  the  table,"  said  the  boy,  "  if  you'll  let  me 
try." 


The  Scullion  who  Became  a  Sculptor.        197 

The  servant  had  little  faith  in  the  boy's  ability,  but 
not  knowing  what  else  to  do,  he  at  last  consented 
that  Canova  should  try. 

Calling  for  a  large  quantity  of  butter,  little  Anto- 
nio quickly  modelled  a  great  crouching  lion,  which 
everybody  in  the  kitchen  pronounced  beautiful,  and 
which  the  now  rejoicing  head-servant  placed  carefully 
upon  the  table. 

The  company  that  day  consisted  of  the  most  culti- 
vated men  of  Venice — merchants,  princes,  noblemen, 
artists,  and  lovers  of  art — and  among  them  were  many 
who,  like  Faliero  himself,  were  skilled  critics  of  art- 
work. 

When  these  people  were  ushered  in  to  dinner  their 
eyes  fell  upon  the  butter  lion,  and  they  forgot  for 
what  purpose  they  had  entered  the  dining-room. 
They  saw  there  something  of  higher  worth  in  their 
eyes  than  any  dinner  could  be,  namely,  a  work  of 
genius. 

They  scanned  the  butter  lion  critically,  and  then 
broke  forth  in  a  torrent  of  praises,  insisting  that  Fa- 


198  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

liero  should  tell  them  at  once  what  great  sculptor  he 
had  persuaded  to  waste  his  skill  upon  a  work  in  but- 
ter, that  must  quickly  melt  away.  But  Signor  Faliero 
was  as  ignorant  as  they,  and  he  had,  in  his  turn,  to 
make  inquiry  of  the  chief  servant. 

When  the  company  learned  that  the  lion  was  the 
work  of  a  scullion,  Faliero  summoned  the  boy,  and 
the  banquet  became  a  sort  of  celebration  in  his  honor. 

But  it  was  not  enough  to  praise  a  lad  so  gifted. 
These  were  men  who  knew  that  such  genius  as  his 
belonged  to  the  world,  not  to  a  village,  and  it  was 
their  pleasure  to  bring  it  to  perfection  by  educating 
the  boy  in  art.  Signor  Faliero  himself  claimed  the 
right  to  provide  for  young  Antonio,  and  at  once  de- 
clared his  purpose  to  defray  the  lad's  expenses,  and 
to  place  him  under  the  tuition  of  the  best  masters. 

The  boy  whose  highest  ambition  had  been  to  be- 
come a  village  stone-cutter,  and  whose  home  had  been 
in  his  poor  old  grandfather's  cottage,  became  at  once 
a  member  of  Signor  Faliero's  family,  living  in  his  pal- 
ace, having  everything  that  money  could  buy  at  his 


The  Scullion  who  Became  a  Sculptor.        199 

command,  and  daily  receiving  instruction  from  the 
best  sculptors  of  Venice. 

But  he  was  not  in  the  least  spoiled  by  this  change 
in  his  fortunes.  He  remained  simple,  earnest,  and 
unaffected.  He  worked  as  hard  to  acquire  knowledge 
and  skill  in  art  as  he  had  meant  to  work  to  become 
a  dexterous  stone-cutter. 

Antonio  Canova's  career  from  the  day  on  which  he 
moulded  the  butter  into  a  lion  was  steadily  upward ; 
and  when  he  died,  in  1822,  he  was  not  only  one  of 
the  most  celebrated  sculptors  of  his  time,  but  one  of 
the  greatest,  indeed,  of  all  time. 


THE  BOYHOOD  OF  WILLIAM  CHAMBERS. 

BOYS  and  girls  who  can  buy  attractive  periodicals 
and  books  at  any  bookstore  or  news-stand,  can  have 
very  little  notion  of  the  difficulty  that  little  folk 
had  seventy  or  eighty  years  ago  in  getting  some- 
thing to  read.  It  was  only  about  fifty  years  ago, 
indeed,  that  the  first  efforts  were  made  to  supply 
cheap,  instructive,  and  entertaining  literature,  and 
one  of  the  men  who  made  those  efforts  was  Mr. 
William  Chambers,  who,  in  1882,  when  he  was 
eighty-two  years  of  age,  published  a  little  account 
of  his  life.  What  he  has  to  tell  of  his  boyhood 
and  youth  is  very  interesting. 

His  father  was  unfortunate  in  business,  and  became 
so  poor  that  young  Chambers  had  to  begin  making 
his  own  way  very  early  in  life.  He  had  little  school- 
ing— only  six  pounds'  (thirty  dollars)  worth  in  all, 


The  Boyhood  of  William  Chambers.         20 1 

he  tells  us — and,  as  there  were  no  juvenile  books  or 
periodicals  in  those  days,  and  no  books  of  any  other 
kind,  except  costly  ones,  it  was  hard  for  him  to  do 
much  in  the  way  of  educating  himself.  But  William 
Chambers  meant  to  learn  all  that  he  could,  and  that 
determination  counted  for  a  good  deal.  There  was 
a  small  circulating  library  in  his  native  town,  and 
he  began  by  reading  all  the  books  in  it,  without 
skipping  one.  Then  he  got  hold  of  a  copy  of  the 
"  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  which  most  boys  would 
regard  as  very  dry  reading.  He  read  it  careful- 
ly. When  that  was  done  young  Chambers  was 
really  pretty  well  educated,  although  he  did  not 
know  it. 

About  that  time  the  boy  had  to  go  to  work  for 
his  living.  He  became  an  apprentice  to  a  bookseller 
in  Edinburgh.  His  wages  were  only  four  shillings 
(about  a  dollar)  a  week,  and  on  that  small  sum  he 
had  to  support  himself,  paying  for  food,  lodging, 
clothes,  and  everything  else,  for  five  years.  "  It  was 
a  hard  but  somewhat  droll  scrimmage  with  semi- 


202  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

starvation,"  he  says ;  for,  after  paying  for  his  lodgings 
and  clothes,  he  had  only  about  seven  cents  a  day 
with  which  to  buy  his  food. 

In  the  summer  he  jumped  out  of  bed  at  five  o'clock 
every  morning,  and  spent  the  time  before  the  hour 
for  beginning  business  in  reading  and  making  elec- 
trical experiments.  He  studied  French  in  that  way 
too,  and  on  Sundays  carried  a  French  Testament  to 
church,  and  read  in  French  what  the  minister  read  in 
English. 

Winter  came  on,  and  the  poor  lad  was  puzzled.  It 
was  not  only  cold,  but  entirely  dark  at  five  o'clock 
in  the  morning  during  the  winter  months,  and  Will- 
iam,  who  had  only  seven  cents  a  day  to  buy  food 
with,  could  not  afford  either  a  fire  or  a  candle  to  read 
by.  There  was  no  other  time  of  day,  however,  that 
he  could  call  his  own,  and  so  it  seemed  that  he  must 
give  up  his  reading  altogether,  which  was  a  great 
grief  to  the  ambitious  lad. 

Just  then  a  piece  of  good -luck  befell  him.  He 
happened  to  know  what  is  called  a  "  sandwich  man  " 


The  Boyhood  of  William  Chambers.          203 

-that  is  to  say,  a  man  who  walks  about  with  signs 
hanging  behind  and  before  him.  One  day  this  man 
made  him  a  proposition.  The  sandwich  man  knew 
a  baker  who,  with  his  two  sons,  carried  on  a  small 
business  in  a  cellar.  The  baker  was  fond  of  reading, 
but  had  no  time  for  it,  and  as  he  and  his  sons  had  to 
bake  their  bread  early  in  the  morning,  he  proposed, 
through  the  sandwich  man,  to  employ  William  Cham- 
bers as  reader.  His  plan  was  that  Chambers  should 
go  to  the  cellar  bakery  every  morning  at  five  o'clock 
and  read  to  the  bakers,  and  for  this  service  he  prom- 
ised to  give  the  boy  one  hot  roll  each  morning.  Here 
was  double  good -fortune.  It  enabled  Chambers  to 
go  on  with  his  reading  by  the  baker's  light  and  fire, 
and  it  secured  for  him  a  sufficient  breakfast  without 
cost. 

He  accepted  the  proposition  at  once,  and  for  two 
and  a  half  hours  every  morning  he  sat  on  a  flour-sack 
in  the  cellar,  and  read  to  the  bakers  by  the  light  of  a 
penny  candle  stuck  in  a  bottle. 

Out  of  his  small  wages  it  was  impossible  for  the 


2O4  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

boy  to  save  anything,  and  so,  when  the  five  years  of 
his  apprenticeship  ended,  he  had  only  five  shillings 
in  the  world.  Yet  he  determined  to  begin  business 
at  once  on  his  own  account.  Getting  credit  for  ten 
pounds'  worth  of  books,  he  opened  a  little  stall,  and 
thus  began  what  has  since  grown  to  be  a  great  pub- 
lishing business. 

He  had  a  good  deal  of  unoccupied  time  at  his  stall, 
and  "  in  order  to  pick  up  a  few  shillings,"  as  he  says, 
he  began  to  write  out  neat  copies  of  poems  for  al- 
bums. Finding  sale  for  these,  he  determined  to  en- 
large that  part  of  his  business  by  printing  the  po- 
ems. For  that  purpose  he  bought  a  small  and  very 
"  squeaky  "  press  and  a  font  of  worn  type  which  had 
been  used  for  twenty  years.  He  had  to  teach  him- 
self how  to  set  the  type,  and,  as  his  press  would 
print  only  half  a  sheet  at  a  time,  it  was  very  slow 
work;  but  he  persevered,  and  gradually  built  up  a 
little  printing  business  in  connection  with  his  book- 
selling. After  a  while  he  published  an  edition  of 
Burns's  poems,  setting  the  type,  printing  the  pages, 


The  Boyhood  of  William  Chambers.         205 

and  binding  the  books  with  his  own  hands,  and  clear- 
ing eight  pounds  by  the  work. 

Chambers  wrote  a  good  deal  at  that  time,  and  his 
brother  Robert  wrote  still  more,  so  that  they  were  at 
once  authors,  printers,  publishers,  and  booksellers,  but 
all  in  a  very  small  way.  After  ten  years  of  this 
work,  William  Chambers  determined  to  publish  a 
cheap  weekly  paper,  to  be  filled  with  entertain- 
ing and  instructive  matters,  designed  especially  for 
the  people  who  could  not  afford  to  buy  expensive 
books  and  periodicals.  Robert  refused  to  join  in  this 
scheme,  and  so,  for  a  time,  the  whole  work  and  risk 
fell  upon  William.  His  friends  all  agreed  in  think- 
ing that  ruin  would  be  the  result;  but  William  Cham- 
bers thought  he  knew  what  the  people  wanted,  and 
hence  he  went  on. 

The  result  soon  justified  his  expectations.  The 
first  number  was  published  on  the  4th  of  February, 
1832.  Thirty  thousand  copies  were  sold  in  a  few 
days,  and  three  weeks  later  the  sale  rose  to  fifty  thou- 
sand copies  a  week. 


HOW  A  BOY  WAS  HIRED  OUT,  AND  WHAT 
CAME  OF  IT. 

WHEN  Michael  Angelo  was  twelve  years  of  age, 
although  he  had  had  no  instruction  in  art,  he  did  a 
piece  of  work  which  greatly  pleased  the  painter  Do- 
menico  Ghirlandajo.  That  artist  at  once  declared  that 
here  was  a  lad  of  genius,  who  must  quit  his  school 
studies  and  become  a  painter. 

This  was  what  the  little  Michael  most  wished  to 
do,  but  he  had  no  hope  that  his  father  would  listen 
for  a  moment  to  the  suggestion.  His  father,  Ludo- 
vico  Buonarotti,  was  a  distinguished  man  in  the  state, 
and  held  art  and  artists  in  contempt.  He  had  planned 
a  great  political  career  for  his  boy,  as  the  boy  knew 
very  well. 

Ghirlandajo  was  enthusiastic,  however,  and,  in  com- 


How  a  Boy  was  Hired  Out,  and  What  Came  of  It.  207 

pany  with  the  lad,  he  at  once  visited  Ludovico,  and 
asked  him  to  place  Michael  in  his  studio. 

Ludovico  was  very  angry,  saying  that  he  wished 
his  son  to  become  a  prominent  man  in  society  and 
politics,  not  a  dauber  and  a  mason ;  but  when  he 
found  that  young  Michael  was  determined  to  be  an 
artist  or  nothing  he  gave  way,  though  most  ungra- 
ciously. He  would  not  say  that  he  consented  to 
place  his  son  with  Ghirlandajo ;  he  would  not  admit 
that  the  study  of  art  was  study,  or  the  studio  of  an 
artist  anything  but  a  shop.  He  said  to  the  artist: 
"  I  give  up  my  son  to  you.  He  shall  be  your  appren- 
tice or  your  servant,  as  you  please,  for  three  years,  and 
you  must  pay  me  twenty-four  florins  for  his  services." 

In  spite  of  the  insulting  words  and  the  insulting 
terms,  Michael  Angelo  consented  thus  to  be  hired  out 
as  a  servant  to  the  artist,  who  should  have  been  paid 
by  his  father  for  teaching  him.  He  had  to  endure 
much,  indeed,  besides  the  anger  and  contempt  of  his 
father,  who  forbade  him  even  to  visit  his  house,  and 

utterly  disowned  him.     His  fellow-pupils  were  jeal- 

12 


2O8  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

cms  of  his  ability,  and  ill-treated  him  constantly,  one 
of  them  going  so  far  as  to  break  his  nose  with  a  blow. 

When  Michael  Angelo  had  been  with  Ghirlandajo 
about  two  years,  he  went  one  day  to  the  Gardens  of  St. 
Mark,  where  the  Prince  Lorenzo  de'  Medici — who  was 
the  foremost  patron  of  art  in  Florence — had  established 
a  rich  museum  of  art-works  at  great  expense.  One  of 
the  workmen  in  the  garden  gave  the  boy  leave  to  try 
his  hand  at  copying  some  of  the  sculptures  there,  and 
Michael,  who  had  hitherto  studied  only  painting,  was 
glad  of  a  chance  to  experiment  with  the  chisel,  which 
he  preferred  to  the  brush.  He  chose  for  his  model 
an  ancient  figure  of  a  faun,  which  was  somewhat  mu- 
tilated. The  mouth,  indeed,  was  entirely  broken  off, 
but  the  boy  was  very  self-reliant,  and  this  did  not 
trouble  him.  He  worked  day  after  day  at  the  piece, 
creating  a  mouth  for  it  of  his  own  imagining,  with 
the  lips  parted  in  laughter  and  the  teeth  displayed. 

When  he  had  finished,  and  was  looking  at  his  work, 
a  man  standing  near  asked  if  he  might  offer  a  criti- 
cism. 


How  a  Boy  was  Hired  Out,  and  What  Came  of  It,  209 

"  Yes,"  answered  the  boy,  "  if  it  is  a  just  one." 

"  Of  that  you  shall  be  the  judge,"  said  the  man. 

"Very  well.     What  is  it?" 

"  The  forehead  of  your  faun  is  old,  but  the  mouth 
is  young.  See,  it  has  a  full  set  of  perfect  teeth.  A 
faun  so  old  as  this  one  is  would  not  have  perfect 
teeth." 

The  lad  admitted  the  justice  of  the  criticism,  and 
proceeded  to  remedy  the  defect  by  chipping  away 
two  or  three  of  the  teeth,  and  chiselling  the  gums  so 
as  to  give  them  a  shrivelled  appearance. 

The  next  morning,  when  Michael  went  to  remove 
his  faun  from  the  garden,  it  was  gone.  He  searched 
everywhere  for  it,  but  without  success.  Finally,  see- 
ing the  man  who  had  made  the  suggestion  about  the 
teeth,  he  asked  him  if  he  knew  where  it  was. 

"  Yes,"  replied  the  man,  "  and  if  you  will  follow 
me  I'll  show  you  where  it  is." 

"  Will  you  give  it  back  to  me  ?  I  made  it,  and 
have  a  right  to  it." 

"  Oh,  if  you  must  have  it,  you  shall" 


2io  Strange  Stories  front  History. 

With  that  he  led  the  way  into  the  palace  ot  the 
prince,  and  there,  among  the  most  precious  works  of 
art  in  the  collection,  stood  the  faun.  The  young 
sculptor  cried  out  in  alarm,  declaring  that  the  Prince 
Lorenzo  would  never  forgive  the  introduction  of  so 
rude  a  piece  of  work  among  his  treasures  of  sculpture. 
To  his  astonishment  the  man  declared  that  he  was 
himself  the  Prince  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  and  that  he 
set  the  highest  value  upon  this  work. 

"I  am  your  protector  and  friend,"  he  added. 
"Henceforth  you  shall  be  counted  as  my  son,  for  you 
are  destined  to  become  one  of  the  great  masters  of 
art." 

This  was  overwhelming  good-fortune.  Lorenzo  de' 
Medici  was  a  powerful  nobleman,  known  far  and 
wide  to  be  a  most  expert  judge  of  works  of  art.  His 
approval  was  in  itself  fame  and  fortune. 

Filled  with  joy,  the  lad  went  straightway  to  his 
father's  house,  which  he  had  been  forbidden  to  enter, 
and,  forcing  his  way  into  Ludovico's  presence,  told 
him  what  had  happened.  The  father  refused  to  be- 


How  a  Boy  was  Hired  Out,  and  What  Came  of  It.  211 

lieve  the  good  news  until  Michael  led  him  into  Lo- 
renzo's presence. 

When  the  prince,  by  way  of  emphasizing  his  good- 
will, offered  Ludovico  any  post  he  might  choose,  he 
asked  for  a  very  modest  place  indeed,  saying,  with 
bitter  contempt,  that  it  was  good  enough  "  for  the  fa- 
ther of  a  mason." 


THE  WICKEDEST  MAN  IN  THE   WORLD. 

PRECISELY  at  what  time  the  faithful  and  affection 
ate  subjects  of  his  Majesty  Ivan  IV.,  Czar  of  all  the 
Russias,  conferred  upon  him  his  pet  name,  "  The  Ter- 
rible," history  neglects  to  inform  us,  but  we  are  left 
in  no  uncertainty  as  to  the  entire  appropriateness  of 
the  title,  which  is  now  inseparably  linked  with  his 
baptismal  name.  He  inherited  the  throne  at  the  age 
of  three  years,  and  his  early  education  was  carefully 
attended  to  by  his  faithful  guardians,  who  snubbed 
and  scared  him,  in  the  hope  that  they  might  so  far 
weaken  his  intellect  as  to  secure  a  permanent  control 
over  him,  and  through  him  govern  Russia  as  they 
pleased.  They  made  a  footstool  of  him  sometimes, 
and  a  football  at  others,  and,  under  their  system  of 
training,  the  development  of  those  qualities  of  mind 
and  heart  for  which  he  is  celebrated  was  remarkably 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  the  World.          213 

rapid.  He  was  always  Ivan  the  Terrified,  and  he  be- 
came Ivan  the  Terrible  before  he  was  old  enough  to 
have  played  a  reasonably  good  game  of  marbles,  or 
to  have  become  tolerably  expert  in  the  art  of  mum- 
bling the  peg.  Indeed,  it  seems  that  the  young  grand- 
prince  was  wholly  insensible  to  the  joys  of  these  and 
the  other  excellent  sports  in  which  ordinary  youths 
delight,  and  being  of  an  ingenious  turn  of  mind,  he 
invented  others  better  suited  to  his  tastes  and  char- 
acter. One  of  these  pastimes — perhaps  the  first  and 
simplest  one  devised  by  the  youthful  genius — con- 
sisted in  the  dropping  of  cats,  dogs,  and  other  do- 
mestic animals  from  the  top  of  the  palace  to  the 
pavement  below,  and  sentimental  historians  have 
construed  these  interesting  experiments  in  the  law 
of  gravitation  into  acts  of  wanton  cruelty.  Another 
of  the  young  czar's  amusements  was  to  turn  half- 
famished  pet  bears  loose  upon  passing  pedestrians, 
and  it  is  the  part  of  charity  to  suppose  that  his  pur- 
pose in  this  was  to  study  the  psychological  and 
physiognomical  phenomena  of  fear.  A  less  profitable 


214  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

way  he  had  of  accomplishing  the  same  thing  was  by 
throwing,  or,  as  youthful  Americans  phrase  it,  "  shy- 
ing," stones  at  passers-by,  concealing  himself  mean- 
while behind  a  screen.  He  cultivated  his  skill  in 
horsemanship  by  riding  over  elderly  people,  cripples, 
and  children.  In  short,  his  boyish  sports  were  all  of 
an  original  and  highly  interesting  sort. 

Up  to  the  age  of  thirteen  Ivan  was  under  the  tute- 
lage of  a  council,  of  which  the  Prince  Shnisky  was 
chief,  and  it  was  this  prince  who  domineered  over  the 
boy  and  made  a  footstool  and  a  football  of  his  body. 
At  that  age  Ivan  asserted  his  independence  in  a  very 
positive  and  emphatic  way,  which  even  the  Prince 
Shnisky  could  not  misapprehend.  The  young  czar 
was  out  hunting,  accompanied  by  Shnisky  and  other 
princes  and  boyards,  among  whom  was  Prince  Glu- 
isky,  a  rival  of  Shnisky's,  who  was  prejudiced  against 
that  excellent  gentleman.  At  his  suggestion,  Ivan 
addressed  his  guardian  Shnisky  in  language  which 
the  latter  deemed  insolent.  Shnisky  replied  angrily, 
and  Ivan  requested  his  dogs  to  remonstrate  with  the 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  the  World.  215 

prince,  which  they  did  by  tearing  him  limb  from 
limb. 

Having  thus  silenced  the  dictation  of  Shnisky,  the 
young  prince  became  the  ward  of  the  no  less  excel- 
lent Gluisky,  and  was  carefully  taught  that  the  only 
way  in  which  he  could  effectually  assert  authority 
was  by  punishment.  It  was  made  clear  to  his  bud- 
ding intellect,  too,  that  the  shortest,  simplest,  and 
altogether  the  best  way  to  get  rid  of  disagreeable 
persons  was  to  put  them  to  death,  and  throughout 
his  life  Ivan  never  forgot  this  lesson  for  a  single  mo- 
ment. Power,  he  was  told,  was  worthless  unless  it 
was  used,  and  the  only  way  in  which  it  could  be 
really  used  was  by  oppression.  For  three  years  no 
pains  were  spared  to  teach  him  this  system  of  ethics 
and  politics,  and  the  young  prince,  in  his  anxiety  to 
perfect  himself  in  the  art  of  governing,  diligently 
practised  all  these  precepts. 

When  he  was  seventeen  years  of  age  he  was  for- 
mally crowned  czar.  The  citizens,  ignorant  of  the 
truths  of  political  economy  and  the  principles  of 


2 1 6  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

governmental  science  underlying  the  young  Czar's 
system,  became  alarmed,  and  fired  the  city  one  night. 
When  Ivan  awoke,  he  was  terrified,  being  of  an  ab- 
normally nervous  temperament,  and  the  apparition 
of  a  warning  monk,  together  with  the  influence  of 
Anastasia,  the  young  czarina,  led  the  czar  to  aban- 
don the  simple  and  straightforward  methods  of  gov- 
ernment in  which  he  had  been  bred,  and  for  thirteen 
years,  under  the  dictation  of  Alexis  Adascheff  and 
the  monk  Sylvester,  Ivan  devoted  himself  to  the  com- 
monplace employments  of  developing  Russia  polit- 
ically and  socially.  He  dismissed  his  ministers  and 
put  others  in  their  places.  He  reorganized  the  army; 
revised  the  code,  in  the  interest  of  abstract  justice; 
equallized  assessments;  subdued  the  Tartars;  estab- 
lished forts  for  the  protection  of  the  frontiers ;  laid 
the  foundation  for  the  future  greatness  of  his  empire ; 
began  'the  work  which  was  completed  so  grandly 
under  Peter  the  Great;  introduced  printing  into 
Russia;  added  greatly  to  her  possessions;  checked 
the  abuses  of  the  clergy ;  brought  artists  from  west 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  the  World.          217 

era  Europe,  and  in  a  hundred  ways  made  himself 
famous  by  doing  those  things  which  historians  love 
to  chronicle. 

Meanwhile,  his  genius  for  governing  upon  the 
Gluiskian  system  lay  dormant.  It  was  not  dead, 
but  slept,  and  after  its  nap  of  thirteen  years  it  awoke 
one  day,  refreshed.  Anastasia,  the  beautiful  queen 
whose  influence  had  been  supreme  for  so  long  a  time, 
died,  and  Ivan  was  free  again.  He  recalled  an  old 
bishop  who  had  been  banished  for  his  crimes,  and 
consulted  him  as  to  his  future  course. 

"  If  you  wish  to  be  truly  a  sovereign,"  said  this 
eminent  prelate,  "  never  seek  a  counsellor  wiser  than 
yourself;  never  receive  advice  from  any  man.  Com- 
mand, but  never  obey ;  and  you  will  be  a  terror  to 
the  boyards.  Remember  that  he  who  is  permitted  to 
begin  by  advising  is  certain  to  end  by  ruling  his  sov- 
ereign." 

Here  was  advice  of  a  sort  suited  to  Ivan's  taste  and 
education,  and  for  reply  he  kissed  the  good  bishop's 
hand,  saying: 


2i8  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

"  My  own  father  could  not  have  spoken  more 
wisely." 

That  the  czar  spoke  sincerely,  his  faithfulness  in 
following  the  bishop's  precepts  abundantly  attests. 

His  ministers  and  advisers  being  manifestly  wiser 
than  he,  and  therefore  not  at  ail  the  proper  kind  of 
people  to  have  about,  he  straightway  banished  them. 
He  then  began  a  diligent  search  for  their  partisans, 
some  of  whom  he  put  to  death,  condemning  others  to 
imprisonment  and  torture.  He  next  turned  his  atten- 
tion to  his  own  household,  which  he  was  resolved 
upon  ruling  absolutely,  at  least,  if  not  well.  One  of 
the  princes  made  himself  disagreeable  by  declining  to 
participate  freely  in  the  pleasures  of  the  palace,  and, 
for  the  sake  of  domestic  harmony,  Ivan  had  him 
poniarded  while  he  was  at  his  prayers.  Another  so 
far  overstepped  the  bounds  of  courtesy  and  propriety 
as  to  remonstrate  with  one  of  the  new  favorites  upon 
his  improper  conduct,  and  Ivan,  in  order  that  there 
might  be  no  bickerings  and  hard  feelings  in  his  fam- 
ily, slew  the  discourteous  prince  with  his  own  hand. 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  the  World.          2 1 9 

He  was  in  the  habit  of  carrying  an  iron  rod  about 
with  him,  and  he  had  a  playful  way  of  striking  his 
friends  with  it  now  and  then,  merely  for  his  amuse- 
ment. His  pleasantries  of  this  and  like  sorts  were 
endless.  One  day  Prince  Boris,  a  boyard,  came  to 
pay  his  respects  to  the  czar,  and  as  he  bowed  to  the 
ground,  according  to  custom,  Ivan,  seizing  a  knife, 
said,  "  God  bless  thee,  my  dear  Boris ;  thou  deservest 
a  proof  of  my  favor,"  and  with  that  he  kindly  cut  the 
nobleman's  ear  off. 

When  Prince  Kurbsky,  whom  he  had  threatened 
with  death,  fled  to  Poland  and  wrote  him  a  letter 
thence,  telling  him  pretty  plainly  what  he  thought 
of  him,  the  czar  playfully  struck  the  bearer  of  the 
missive  with  his  iron  rod,  as  a  preliminary  to  the 
reading  of  the  letter,  and  the  blood  flowed  copiously 
from  the  man's  wounds  while  Ivan  pondered  the 
words  of  his  rebellious  subject.  He  then  became 
convinced  that  the  boyards  generally  sympathized 
with  Kurbsky,  and  to  teach  them  better  he  put  a 
good  many  of  them  to  death  by  torture,  and  deprived 


220  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

many  others  of  their  estates.  His  alarm  was  very 
real,  however,  for  he  was  a  phenomenon  of  abject 
cowardice.  He  therefore  fled  to  a  fortified  place  in 
the  midst  of  a  dense  forest,  where  he  remained  a 
month,  writing  letters  to  the  Russians,  telling  them 
that  he  had  abdicated  and  left  them  to  their  fate  as 
a  punishment  for  their  disloyalty  and  their  crimes. 
Singularly  enough,  his  flight  terrified  the  people.  He 
had  taught  them  that  he  was  their  god  as  God  was 
his,  and  his  flight  to  Alexandrovsky  seemed  to  them 
a  withdrawal  of  the  protection  of  Providence  itself. 
Business  was  suspended.  The  courts  ceased  to  sit. 
The  country  was  in  an  agony  of  terror.  A  large 
deputation  of  boyards  and  priests  journeyed  to  Alex- 
androvsky, and  besought  the  sovereign  to  return  and 
resume  his  holy  functions  as  the  head  of  the  church, 
that  the  souls  of  so  many  millions  might  not  perish. 
Exacting  of  clergy  and  nobles  an  admission  of  his 
absolute  right  to  do  as  he  pleased,  and  a  promise  that 
they  would  in  no  way  interfere  with  or  resist  hia 
authority,  he  returned  to  Moscow.  Here  he  sur 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  the  World.  221 

rounded  himself  with  a  body-guard  of  desperadoes, 
one  thousand  strong  at  first,  and  afterwards  increased 
to  six  thousand,  whose  duty  it  was  to  discover  the 
czar's  enemies  and  to  sweep  them  from  the  face  of 
the  earth.  As  emblems  of  these  their  functions,  each 
member  of  the  guard  carried  at  his  saddle-bow  a 
dog's  head  and  a  broom.  As  the  punishment  of  the 
czar's  enemies  included  the  confiscation  of  their  prop- 
erty, a  large  part  of  which  was  given  to  the  guards 
themselves,  these  were  always  singularly  successful 
in  discovering  the  disaffection  of  wealthy  nobles, 
finding  it  out  oftentimes  before  the  nobles  them- 
selves were  aware  of  their  own  treasonable  senti- 
ments. 

Feeling  unsafe  still,  Ivan  built  for  himself  a  new 
palace,  outside  the  walls  of  the  Kremlin,  making  it 
an  impregnable  castle.  Then,  finding  that  even  this 
did  not  lull  his  shaken  nerves  to  rest,  he  proceeded 
to  put  danger  afar  off  by  dispossessing  the  twelve 
thousand  rich  nobles  whose  estates  lay  nearest  the 
palace,  and  giving  their  property  to  his  personal  fol- 


222  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

lowers,  so  that  the  head  which  wore  the  crown  might 
lie  easy  in  the  conviction  that  there  were  no  possible 
enemies  near  on  the  other  side  of  the  impregnable 
walls  which  shut  him  in.  But  even  then  he  could 
not  sleep  easily,  and  so  he  repaired  again  to  his  forest 
stronghold  at  Alexandrovsky,  where  he  surrounded 
himself  with  guards  and  ramparts.  Here  he  con- 
verted the  palace  into  a  monastery,  made  himself  ab- 
bot, and  his  rascally  followers  monks.  He  rigorously 
enforced  monastic  observances  of  the  severest  sort, 
and  no  doubt  became  a  saint,  in  his  own  estimation. 
He  spent  most  of  his  time  at  prayers,  allowing  him- 
self  no  recreation  except  a  daily  sight  of  the  torture 
of  the  prisoners  who  were  confined  in  the  dungeons 
of  the  fortress.  His  guards  were  allowed  rather  a 
larger  share  of  amusement,  and  they  wandered  from 
street  to  street  during  the  day,  punishing,  with  their 
hatchets,  such  disloyal  persons  as  they  encountered. 
They  were  very  moderate  in  their  indulgences,  how- 
ever, in  imitation  of  their  sovereign,  doubtless,  and  it 
is  recorded  to  their  credit,  that,  at  this  time,  they 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  Ihe  World.          223 

rarely  killed  more  than  twenty  people  in  one  day, 
while  sometimes  the  number  was  as  low  as  five. 

But  a  quiet  life  of  this  kind  could  not  always  con- 
tent the  czar.  Naturally,  he  grew  tired  of  individual 
killings,  and  began  to  long  for  some  more  exciting 
sport.  When,  one  day,  a  quarrel  arose  between  some 
of  his  guards  and  a  few  of  the  people  of  Torjek,  Ivan 
saw  at  a  glance  that  all  the  inhabitants  of  Torjek 
were  mutinous  rebels,  and  of  course  it  became  his 
duty  to  put  them  all  to  death,  which  he  straightway 
did. 

Up  to  this  time  the  genius  of  Ivan  seems  to  have 
been  cautiously  feeling  its  way,  and  so  the  part  of  his 
history  already  sketched  may  be  regarded  as  a  mere 
preliminary  t,o  his  real  career.  His  extraordinary 
capacity  for  ruling  an  empire  upon  the  principles 
taught  him  by  the  Prince  Gluisky  was  now  about  to 
show  itself  in  all  its  greatness.  A  criminal  of  Nov- 
gorod, feeling  himself  aggrieved  by  the  authorities  of 
that  city,  who  had  incarcerated  him  for  a  time,  wrote 

a  letter  offering  to  place  the  city  under  Polish  protec. 

13 


224  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

tion.  This  letter  he  sigued,  not  with  his  own  name,  but 
with  that  of  the  archbishop,  and,  instead  of  sending 
it  to  the  King  of  Poland,  to  whom  it  was  addressed, 
he  secreted  it  in  the  church  of  St.  Sophia.  Then, 
going  to  Alexandrovsky,  he  told  Ivan  that  treason 
was  contemplated  by  the  Novgorodians,  and  that  the 
treasonable  letter  would  be  found  behind  the  statue 
of  the  Virgin  in  the  church.  Ivan  sent  a  messenger 
to  find  the  letter,  and  upon  his  return  the  czar  began 
his  march  upon  the  doomed  city.  Happening  to  pass 
through  the  town  of  Khur,  on  his  way  to  Novgorod, 
he  put  all  its  inhabitants  to  death,  with  the  purpose, 
doubtless,  of  training  his  troops  in  the  art  of  whole- 
sale massacre,  before  requiring  them  to  practise  it 
upon  the  people  of  Novgorod.  Finding  this  system 
of  drill  an  agreeable  pastime,  he  repeated  it  upon  his 
arrival  at  the  city  of  Twer,  and  then,  in  order  that 
the  other  towns  along  his  route  might  have  no  reason 
to  complain  of  partiality,  he  bestowed  upon  all  of 
them  a  like  manifestation  of  his  imperial  regard. 
It  is  not  my  purpose  to  describe  in  detail  the  elab- 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  the  World.          225 

orate  and  ingenious  cruelty  practised  in  the  massacre 
of  the  Novgorodians.  The  story  is  sickening.  Ivan 
first  heard  mass,  and  then  began  the  butchery,  which 
lasted  for  many  days,  was  conducted  with  the  utmost 
deliberation  and  most  ingenious  cruelty,  and  ended 
in  the  slaughter  of  sixty  thousand  people.  Ivan  had 
selected  certain  prominent  citizens,  to  the  number  of 
several  hundred,  whom  he  reserved  for  public  and 
particularly  cruel  execution  at  Moscow.  Summoning 
the  small  and  wretched  remnant  of  the  population  to 
his  presence,  he  besought  their  prayers  for  the  con- 
tinuance and  prosperity  of  his  reign,  and  with  gra- 
cious words  of  farewell  took  his  departure  from  the 
city. 

The  execution  in  Moscow  of  the  reserved  victims 
was  a  scene  too  horrible  to  be  described  in  these 
pages.  Indeed,  the  half  of  Ivan's  enormities  may  not 
be  told  here  at  all,  and  even  the  historians  content 
themselves  with  the  barest  outlines  of  many  parts  of 
his  career.  He  thought  himself  in  some  sense  a  deity, 
and  blasphemously  asserted  that  his  throne  was  sur- 


226  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

rounded  by  archangels  precisely  as  God's  is.  Identi- 
fying himself  with  the  Almighty,  he  claimed  exemp- 
tion from  the  observance  of  God's  laws,  and,  in 
defiance  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Greek 
Church,  of  which  he  was  the  head,  he  married  seven 
wives.  Believing  that  he  might  with  equal  impunity 
insult  the  moral  sense  of  other  nations,  he  actually 
sought  to  add  England's  queen,  Elizabeth,  to  the  list 
of  his  spouses.  And  he  was  so  far  right  in  his  esti- 
mate of  his  power  to  do  as  he  pleased,  that  the  Virgin 
Queen,  head  of  the  English  Church,  while  she  would 
not  herself  become  one  of  his  wives,  consented  to  as- 
sist him,  and  selected  for  his  eighth  consort  Mary 
Hastings,  the  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon. 
She  came  near  bringing  about  a  marriage  between 
the  two,  in  face  of  the  fact  that  the  two  churches  of 
which  Ivan  and  she  were  respectively  the  heads  were 
agreed  in  condemning  polygamy  as  a  heinous  crime. 
For  one  only  of  all  his  crimes  Ivan  showed  regret, 
if  not  remorse.  His  oldest  and  favorite  son,  when 
the  city  of  Pskof  was  besieged  by  the  Poles,  asked 


The  Wickedest  Man  in  the  World.          227 

that  he  might  be  intrusted  with  the  command  of  a 
body  of  troops  with  which  to  assist  the  beleaguered 
place.  Ivan  was  so  great  a  coward  that  he  dared  not 
trust  the  affection  and  loyalty  of  even  his  own  favorite 
child,  and  in  a  fit  of  mino-led  fear  and  rao;e  he  beat 

/  o  o 

the  young  man  to  death  with  his  iron  staff,  saying, 

"  Rebel,  you  are  leagued  with  the  boyards  in  a  con- 
spiracy to  dethrone  me." 

Remorse  seized  upon  him  at  once,  and  his  sufferings 
and  his  fears  of  retribution  were  terrible.  Finally  he 
determined  to  abandon  the  throne  and  seek  peace  in 

a  convent,  but  the  infatuated  Russians  entreated  him 

t 

not  to  desert  them.     He  died  at  last,  in  1580. 

Did  Scheherazade  herself  ever  imagine  a  stranger 
story  than  this?  And  yet  it  is  plain  history,  and  is 
only  a  fragment  of  the  truth. 


A  PRINCE  WHO  WOULD  NOT  STAY  DEAD. 

His  name  was  Dmitri,  and  he  was  hereditary  Grand- 
Prince  of  all  the  Russias,  being  the  son  of  Ivan  the 
Terrible,  and  only  surviving  brother  of  Feodor,  the 
childless  successor  of  that  blood-thirsty  czar.  He  was 
carefully  killed  in  the  presence  of  witnesses,  during  his 
boyhood,  and  duly  buried,  with  honors  appropriate 
to  his  station  in  life;  so  that  if  Dmitri  had  been  an  or- 
dinary mortal,  or  even  an  ordinary  prince,  there  would 
have  been  no  story  of  his  life  to  tell,  except  the  brief 
tragedy  of  his  taking  off.  He  was  no  ordinary  prince, 
however,  and  so  the  trifling  incident  of  his  death  dur- 
ing childhood  had  as  little  to  do  with  his  career  as 
had  one  or  two  other  episodes  of  a  like  nature  in  the 
history  of  his  later  life.  He  was  born  to  rule  Russia, 
and  was  not  at  all  disposed  to  excuse  himself  from 
the  performance  of  the  duty  Providence  had  thus  im- 


A  Prince  who  Would  Not  Stay  Dead.       229 

posed  upon  him,  by  pleading  the  two  or  three  thor- 
ough killings  to  which  he  was  subjected.  The  story, 
as  preserved  in  authentic  history,  is  a  very  interesting 
one,  and  may  perhaps  bear  repeating  here.  The  read- 
er  may  find  all  the  facts  in  any  reputable  history  of 
Russia,  or  of  the  houses  of  Rurik  and  Romanoff. 

In  his  jealousy  of  the  absolute  power  he  wielded, 
Ivan  the  Terrible  had  made  constant  war  upon  his 
nobility — killing  them,  or  driving  them  away,  and  in 
every  way  possible  destroying  whatever  share  of  in- 
fluence they  possessed  in  the  state.  When  he  died, 
leaving  as  his  successor  Feodor,  a  weak  prince,  of  un- 
certain temper  and  infirm  intellect,  the  nobility — nat- 
urally enough — hoped  to  regain  their  ancient  influ- 
ence in  the  state,  and  might  have  accomplished  their 
purpose  without  difficulty  if  their  measures  to  that 
end  had  been  taken  concertedly ;  but,  jealous  as  they 
were  of  the  privileges  of  their  class,  they  were  even 
more  tenacious  of  their  individual  and  family  preteu 
sions.  They  quarrelled  among  themselves,  in  short, 
and,  while  they  were  quarrelling,  a  bold  and  ambitious 


230  Strange  Stories  from  History, 

man,  Boris  Godunof,  who  happened  to  be  the  czar's 
brother-in-law,  conceived  the  project  of  becoming 
prime-minister  and  actual  ruler  of  the  empire.  In- 
deed, his  ambition  extended  even  further  than  this. 
Not  content  with  governing  Russia  in  the  name  of 
Feodor,  he  set  covetous  eyes  upon  the  purple  itself, 
and  was  resolved  to  become  czar  in  name  as  well  as 
in  fact.  But  this  was  a  delicate  and  difficult  task, 
and  could  be  accomplished  only  at  great  risk  and  by 
great  patience.  Boris  was  a  man  of  undoubted  gen- 
ius, extreme  shrewdness,  unlimited  ambition,  and  re- 
markable personal  courage ;  and  difficult  and  danger- 
ous as  his  task  was,  he  seems  never  to  have  faltered 
in  his  purpose  from  the  instant  of  its  conception  to 
the  time  of  its  execution. 

Knowing  the  power  of  money  in  state  affairs,  he 
took  care  to  accumulate  a  vast  sum  in  his  own  private 
coffers,  as  a  first  step.  He  conciliated  the  common 
people  in  a  hundred  ways — by  wise  legislation,  by  the 
reformation  of  abuses  which  pressed  hardly  upon 
them,  and  sometimes  by  the  oppression  of  the  nobles 


A  Prince  who  Wort  Id  Not  Stay  Dead.       231 

in  the  interest  of  the  lower  classes.  He  was  not  long 
in  making  himself  altogether  the  most  popular  man 
in  Russia.  He  removed,  by  death  or  banishment, 
those  whom  he  could  not  conciliate,  together  with  all 
other  persons  whom  he  thought  likely  to  prove  obsta- 
cles in  the  way  of  his  grand  purpose.  In  short,  a 
very  brief  time  sufficed  him  for  the  winning  of  a  pop- 
ularity which,  in  any  country  but  Russia,  would  have 
been  sufficient  for  his  need.  But  Boris  knew  his 
Russians  well.  He  knew  that  loyalty  to  the  line  of 
Rurik  was  the  strongest  feeling  in  their  breasts,  after 
that  of  devotion  to  their  creed — of  which,  indeed,  it 
formed  a  chief  part.  It  was  their  fixed  belief  in  the 
divine  right  of  the  legitimate  princes  of  the  House  of 
Rurik  to  reign,  that  had  kept  them  patient,  even  un- 
der the  rigors  of  Ivan's  rule;  and  Boris  knew  well 
enough  that  no  usurper,  however  strongly  intrenched 
in  their  affections  he  might  be,  could  hope  to  win 
those  superstitiously  loyal  people  to  his  support 
against  any  prince  of  the  right  line,  however  brutal, 
unjust,  and  despotic  that  prince  might  be.  He  knew, 


232  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

in  brief,  that  so  long  as  any  descendant  of  Hm-ik 
should  live,  no  other  man  could  hope  to  seat  himself 
upon  the  Muscovite  throne.  Feodor  had  no  children, 
but  he  had  one  brother,  the  lad  Dmitri,  who  would 
be  his  successor  in  the  natural  course  of  events.  His 
existence  was  sure  to  prove  an  effectual  bar  to  all 
Boris's  hopes ;  and  so  it  was  necessary  to  get  him  out 
of  the  way  before  the  scheme  should  be  ripe  for  exe- 
cution. To  accomplish  this,  the  wily  minister  sent 
Dmitri  and  his  mother  to  the  distant  town  of  Uglitch, 
and  there,  by  his  orders,  the  young  prince  was  mur- 
dered, in  the  presence  of  his  nurse  and  six  other  peo- 
ple, and  buried  from  his  mother's  residence.  This 
was  in  1591.  The  lad's  death  was  announced,  of 
course.  Indeed,  it  was  known  to  nearly  everybody 
in  Uglitch,  the  tocsin  having  been  sounded,  and  the 
population  having  gathered  around  the  murdered 
boy,  where  they  put  to  death  a  good  many  who  were 
suspected  of  complicity  with  the  murderers.  But  in 
publishing  it  abroad  in  Russia,  Boris  deemed  it  pru- 
dent to  attribute  it,  some  say  to  a  fever,  others  to  an 


A  Prince  who  Would  Not  Stay  Dead.       233 

accidental  fall  upon  a  knife  with  which  the  boy  had 
been  playing ;  and  lest  the  people  of  Uglitch  should 
embarrass  the  minister  by  insisting  upon  a  different 
diagnosis  of  the  boy's  last  illness,  that  prudent  offi- 
cial put  a  great  many  of  them  to  death,  cut  the 
tongues  out  of  others'  heads,  and  banished  the  rest  to 
Siberia — laying  the  town  in  ashes.  He  spared  the 
lad's  mother,  but  shut  her  up  in  a  convent. 

Dmitri  was  now  out  of  the  way,  or,  rather,  he  would 
have  been  if  he  had  had  an  ordinary  capacity  for  stay- 
ing comfortably  killed ;  and  Boris  redoubled  his  ef- 
forts to  prepare  the  way  for  his  own  elevation  to  the 
throne,  as  Feodor's  successor,  when  that  prince  should 
chance  to  let  the  sceptre  fall  from  his  grasp. 

To  secure  the  influence  of  the  Church  in  his  behalf, 
he  bought  of  a  Greek  bishop  the  right  to  appoint  the 
successor  of  the  patriarch  (a  sort  of  Greek  Church 
pope) ;  and  that  office  presently  becoming  vacant,  he 
appointed  a  creature  of  his  own  as  head  of  the  Church, 
He  succeeded  in  winning  the  favor  of  the  inferior  no- 
bility, who  were  very  numerous,  and  made  himself 
strong  in  many  other  ways. 


234  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

Boris  was  a  fellow  of  infinite  good-luck ;  and  so  it 
fell  out  that,  at  the  precise  moment  when  all  his  plans 
were  complete,  the  Czar  Feodor  obligingly  died.  So 
opportunely  did  this  event  happen,  that  grave  histo- 
rians have  been  inclined  to  suspect  Boris  of  having 
procured  it  in  some  way ;  but  of  this  there  is  no  pos- 
itive evidence. 

Feodor  dead,  there  was  no  heir  to  the  throne. 
With  him  ended  the  line  of  Rurik,  which  alone  the 
Russians  recognized  as  legitimately  entitled  to  rule 
the  empire;  and  now  a  new  czar  must  be  chosen. 
The  nobles  quarrelled,  of  course.  They  agreed  in 
thinking  that  one  of  their  order  should  be  elevated 
to  the  throne;  but  they  could  by  no  means  agree 
which  one  it  should  be.  Each  resented  the  preten- 
sions of  all  the  others,  and  it  speedily  became  mani- 
fest that  the  patriarch's  nomination,  upon  whomso- 
ever it  might  fall,  would  turn  the  scale  and  elect  a  czar. 
The  patriarch  was  Boris's  own  creature,  appointed  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  forwarding  that  minister's  plans ; 
and  he  promptly  nominated  Boris  to  the  vacant  throne. 


A  Prince  who  Would  Not  Stay  Dead.       235 

The  election  was  a  prearranged  affair ;  and  presently 
Boris  was  waited  upon — in  the  convent  to  which  he 
had  retired  with  the  declared  purpose  of  leading  a 
monastic  life  in  future — and  informed  of  his  selection 
by  the  people  as  Czar  of  all  the  Russias.  He  mod- 
estly declined,  of  course ;  and,  equally  of  course,  his 
modesty  only  made  the  people  the  more  clamorous. 
After  some  weeks  of  petty  dalliance  Boris  finally  al- 
lowed himself  to  be  persuaded,  and  was  crowned 
czar,  in  due  form,  in  the  year  1598. 

He  was  not  long  in  discovering  that  his  position 
was  insecure,  and  incapable  of  being  made  safe. 
Whatever  policy  he  might  adopt — and  he  was  dis- 
posed, it  appears,  to  govern  wisely  and  well — was 
sure  to  displease  some  of  his  subjects;  and  in  the 
hands  of  a  hostile  faction,  his  want  of  hereditary 
claim  upon  the  throne  was  a  powerful  weapon.  What 
he  had  seized  by  crime  he  must  keep  by  tyranny  and 
violence,  and  a  three  years'  famine  added  greatly  to 
his  embarrassments.  Whatever  he  did  excited  dis- 
content ;  and  to  make  his  wretchedness  complete,  he 


236  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

fancied  himself  haunted  by  the  ghost  of  the  murdered 
Dmitri.  There  were  symptoms  of  mutiny  everywhere, 
which  daily  threatened  to  culminate  in  open  revolt. 
It  needed  only  a  match  to  fire  the  mine. 

In  1603,  when  matters  were  at  their  worst,  there 
appeared  in  Poland  a  young  man  who  claimed  to  be 
the  murdered  Dmitri.  His  story  was  that,  by  means 
of  an  adroit  substitution,  another  boy  had  been  killed 
in  his  place;  that  he  had  escaped;  and  he  claimed 
the  throne  of  the  Ruriks.  He  strongly  resembled  the 
prince  he  claimed  to  be,  and  his  identity  seemed  to 
be  established,  also,  by  other  evidence  than  mere  per- 
sonal resemblance.  There  was  no  "  strawberry  mark 
on  his  left  arm,"  but  both  he  and  the  dead  prince,  if, 
indeed,  they  were  two  distinct  persons,  had  a  wart  on 
the  forehead,  and  another  under  the  right  eye,  and  in 
both  one  arm  was  slightly  longer  than  the  other. 
The  pretender,  or  real  prince,  as  the  case  may  be, 
had  also  a  valuable  jewel  which  had  belonged  to 
Dmitri ;  and  so  he  was  not  long  in  winning  credence 
for  his  story,  both  in  Poland  and  in  Russia.  Boris 


A  Prince  who  Would  Not  Stay  Dead.       237 

gave  out  that  the  young  man  was  the  monk  Otrafief, 
who  had  appeared  in  the  army  as  his  advocate  and 
emissary;  and  some  historians — Karamsin  and  Bell 
among  the  number — have  accepted  this  theory;  but 
a  careful  comparison  of  dates  seems  to  contradict  it. 
Whoever  the  man  was,  he  was  an  able  and  accom- 
plished diplomatist  as  well  as  a  singularly  bold  war- 
rior; and  he  succeeded  presently  in  winning  the  rec- 
ognition of  Sigismund,  King  of  Poland,  and  putting 
himself  at  the  head  of  an  army  with  which  he  in- 
vaded Russia.  He  had  privately  abjured  the  Greek 
faith,  and  undertaken  to  convert  Russia  into  a  Catho- 
lic power;  and,  in  addition  to  the  many  other  favors 
promised  the  Poles,  he  had  engaged  to  marry  Marina, 
the  daughter  of  a  Polish  nobleman. 

O 

During  the  autumn  of  the  year  1604,  this  new 
Dmitri  began  his  invasion  at  the  head  of  a  small  army 
made  up  of  Poles  and  Don  Cossacks.  On  his  march 
his  force  was  swelled  by  accessions,  and  a  number  of 
towns  declared  in  his  favor.  Boris  sent  an  army  four 
times  as  great  as  his  own,  to  destroy  him ;  and  battle 


238  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

was  joined  on  the  last  day  of  December.  Dmitri's 
case  seemed  utterly  hopeless ;  but  he  was  both  able 
and  brave.  He  fought  with  the  resolution  and  cour- 
age of  a  hero,  the  skill  of  a  consummate  tactician,  and 
the  fury  of  a  demon.  And  in  spite  of  the  terrible 
odds  against  him,  he  won  a  great  victory.  In  a  mili- 
tary way,  its  results  were  neutralized  by  the  with- 
drawal of  his  Poles,  and  by  some  other  circumstances 
which  forbade  his  pushing  forward  towards  the  capi- 
tal ;  but  the  moral  effect  was  altogether  in  his  favor. 
The  superstitious  Russians  saw  in  his  marvellous  suc- 
cess a  miracle,  and  accepted  it  as  proof  positive  that 
this  was  the  true  prince,  to  oppose  whom  was  sacri- 
lege. By  dint  of  great  energy  Boris  was  able  to  main- 
tain the  war  till  the  time  of  his  own  death,  which 
happened  during  the  spring  of  1605.  His  son  Feo- 
dor  was  crowned  as  his  successor ;  but  a  few  weeks 
later  he  was  deposed  and  strangled,  and  the  new 
Dmitri  came  to  the  throne. 

For  a  time  his  wisdom  as  a  statesman  promised  to 
equal  his  skill  and  courage  as  a  soldier,  but  his  man- 


A  Prince  who  Would  Not  Stay  Dead.       239 

ifest  preference  for  Poles  to  Russians  soon  created 
jealousy  ;  and  imagining  that  he  could  overcome  prej- 
udices by  violent  measures,  as  easily  as  he  had  con- 
quered a  throne,  he  spared  no  pains  to  insult  the  Rus- 
sian national  feeling.  He  appointed  only  Poles  to 
high  office,  and  lavished  upon  foreigners  so  much  at- 
tention as  to  breed  discontent  in  his  own  capital. 
His  apostasy  from  the  Greek  to  the  Roman  faith,  also, 
was  suspected,  and  the  clergy  became  his  implacable 
enemies.  The  disaffection  grew  daily,  and  the  efforts 
Dmitri  made  to  overawe  his  enemies  only  exasperated 
them.  Finally,  on  the  occasion  of  his  marriage  with 
Marina,  the  Polish  princess — which  was  celebrated 
with  great  pomp  by  a  throng  of  Polish  soldiers  and 
others,  invited  to  Moscow  for  the  purpose — a  mob, 
headed  by  Shuiski,  or  Schnisky  —  for  the  name  is 
spelled  in  both  of  these  and  half  a  dozen  other  ways 
—stormed  the  palace,  butchered  the  Poles,  and  im- 
paled Dmitri  on  a  spear.  To  leave  no  doubt  of  his 
death  this  time,  they  kept  his  body  transfixed  with 
the  spear,  in  front  of  the  palace,  for  three  days,  that 


240  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

the  people  might  wreak  their  vengeance  upon  the 
dead  czar  by  insulting  his  corpse. 

Schnisky  profited  by  his  victory,  and  while  the 
blood  of  the  populace  was  still  hot  was  chosen  czar, 
as  successor  of  the  impostor  he  had  overthrown.  His 
popularity  was  short-lived,  however.  His  fellows 
among  the  nobles  resented  his  elevation  above  them- 
selves,  and  ere  long  the  desire  for  his  removal  was  as 
unanimous  as  his  election  had  been.  This  seemed  a 
good  time  for  the  doubly  dead  Dmitri  to  come  to  life 
again ;  and  so  it  was  presently  rumored  that  after  all 
he  had  not  been  killed;  that  the  corpse  the  people 
had  spat  upon  and  insulted  was  not  his ;  that  he  was 
alive,  in  Poland,  and  ready  to  claim  his  own.  This 
report  was  industriously  circulated  by  the  nobles;  but 
as  the  people  had  not  yet  forgotten  their  hatred  for 
the  usurper,  he  was  permitted  to  lie  down  in  his  grave 


again. 


To  prevent  his  coming  to  life  for  a  third  time,  the 
dead  czar's  remains  were  disinterred  and  burned. 
The  ashes  were  collected  and  fired  from  a  piece  of 


A  Prince  who  Would  Not  Stay  Dead.       241 

artillery,  and  it  was  supposed  that  further  resurrec- 
tion on  his  part  was  impossible.  But,  as  we  have 
seen,  Dmitri  had  a  most  astonishing  genius  for  com- 
ing to  life  after  being  thoroughly  killed;  and  pres- 
ently he  appeared  again  in  Poland.  This  time,  his- 
tory says,  he  was  either  a  Russian  schoolmaster  or  a 
Polish  Jew ;  but  however  that  may  be,  certain  it  is 
that  he  so  closely  resembled  the  other  two  Dmitri's 
in  personal  appearance,  even  to  the  two  warts  and 
unequally  long  arms,  that  he  imposed  on  everybody 
around  him  with  his  story.  Even  the  Princess  Marina 
accepted  him,  and  actually  lived  with  him  as  his  wife. 

He  was  able,  without  much  difficulty,  to  interest 
the  King  of  Poland  in  his  behalf,  and  to  secure  a  dec- 
laration of  war  by  that  potentate  against  Czar  Schnis- 
ky.  He  invaded  Russia,  won  battles,  captured  Smo- 
lensko,  invested  Moscow,  and  finally  entered  the  city. 

About  this  time  Dmitri  appeared  in  several  other 
places,  but  only  one  of  him  was  in  Moscow  at  the 
head  of  a  victorious  army ;  and  in  behalf  of  this  par- 
ticular one  Schnisky  resigned  his  crown  and  retired 


242  Strange  Stories  from  History. 

to  a  monastery,  whence  he  was  soon  removed  to  a 
dungeon. 

At  this  juncture  the  King  of  Poland,  having  plans 
of  his  own  for  the  union  of  Russia  and  his  own  king- 
dom, withdrew  his  countenance  from  Dmitri;  and 
that  prince  retired  from  the  business  of  governing^ 
and  devoted  himself  for  the  rest  of  his  life  to  the  less 
honorable,  but  perhaps  equally  lucrative,  profession 
of  highway  robbery.  He  was  again  killed  after 
awhile,  this  time  by  a  Don  Cossack.  But  even  this 
public  killing  had  small  effect.  A  dozen  or  more 
new  Dmitri's  appeared,  claiming  the  throne;  and 
some  of  them,  says  the  historian  Bell,  "actually 
touched  the  sceptre  for  a  moment,  but  only  to  recoil 
in  fear  from  the  dangerous  object  of  their  insane  am- 
bition." 

After  awhile,  having  found  the  task  an  unprofitable 
one,  perhaps,  Dmitri  seems  to  have  made  up  his  mind 
to  stay  dead ;  but  in  due  course  a  race  of  his  sons 
sprang  up  quite  as  mysteriously,  if  not  quite  as  per- 
sistently, to  pester  the  Russians,  and  peace  came  to 


A  Prince  who  Would  Not  Stay  Dead.       243 

them  only  through  the  elevation  of  the  Romanoffs  to 
the  imperial  throne.  Connected  as  they  were  by  ties 
of  blood  with  the  race  of  Rurik,  they  brought  legiti- 
macy to  the  rescue  of  a  land  long  torn  by  faction. 
The  loyalty  of  the  people  to  sovereigns  whose  right 
to  rule  was  derived  from  Rurik,  gave  the  dynasty  a 
strength  sufficient  to  maintain  itself;  and  after  a  lit- 
tle while  Peter  the  Great  taught  his  Russians  civili- 
zation, and  a  new  era  in  Russian  history  was  begun 


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